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@Greg

While I completely agree with you, the questing is: why should they stop doing that?

Yes, it's bad faith, yes it's annoying, yes it is harassment of innocent sites and people, but what incentive do they - or any other DMCA pest - have to change?

That's the core problem, as it is with patent infringement cases - you can pretty much just spam out stuff with impunity. Until that changes, and there is either some standard of proof required and/or some proper penalty for harassing innocent people, not to mention compensation when legal content is taken down, nothing is likely to change.

That said, as with patent claims, the process to ensure your work is respected must be easily accessible for all so that independent and 'small' IP owners are not faced with an undue burden when trying to enforce their rights.

There's got to be a balance somewhere and I suspect that with DMCAs the best option is to have a rule that says that every request must be checked and signed off by an authorised representative of the rights holder. This requirement - that someone is actually responsible for saying that yes, this is infringing - would mean that no one could hold up their hands and blame some automated script, which in turn means that penalising false claims is far simpler.