Earlier quoted context omitted.
The part of the DMCA that lets sites and ISPs host/transmit user uploads without being sued on a daily basis is pretty nice.
Except that it does not require you to own the copyright in order to send a take-down notice. It does not even require you to have a reasonable belief that you own the copyright. All it requires is a "good faith belief".
Here's a good intro:
https://www.copyrightalliance.org/2012/03/in-plain-english-a...
The law is far from ideal but a large part of the problem is the penalties for false claims are rarely enforced so there's been little corrective force against the companies which robo-spam claims. Additionally, companies like YouTube have invented additional processes which are often Kafkaesque and, since they're just arbitrary business processes, aren't subject to the normal legal process.