The DMCA already has a system that is much fairer to the average creator in the form of safe harbor provisions. YouTube doesn't like the DMCA process because it's expensive to handle and process individual claims, compared to letting their big partners just sling bogus claims across the entire site.
They'd prefer to be on the side of rightsholders over creators, simply because it's cheaper.
YouTube and their partners intentionally sidestep the DMCA takedown rules in favor of their own system which doesn't have these rules. The point of Content ID is to remove the barriers the law and the DMCA have, in favor of an arbitration system which (mostly) sides with big rightsholders.
Most? To my knowledge in the history of the DMCA not a single person has been hit with a perjury claim, not even the most egregious vexatious claimant.
What about it? It only applies if it can be shown that you intentionally lied. There is absolutely zero penalty for negligence. Even a $20 fee for misfiling would lead to a drastically different environment around DMCA notices.
Here is the exact text from the DMCA from https://www.aclu.org/other/text-digital-millennium-copyright...
(vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly in-fringed.
Note the particular phrasing. The requirement that the information in the notification be accurate is not under penalty of perjury. The only thing that is under penalty of perjury is that you can only DMCA claim things that you have copyright to (or are a lawyer representing that entity).
And it's worse than that, because you can claim something that is totally unrelated without this penalty as long as you own the copyright you claim to be enforcing.
It's unclear to me why it would be expensive. The hosting provider just has to check that a take down request includes all the statutorily required elements.
That should be pretty easy--they don't have to check that the claims are right. They just have to check that the claimant identified the infringed works, the infringing activity, and where it took place; check that contact information was provided; check that the claimant includes a statement they they have a good faith belief that this is infringement; and check that they have a statement that the information is accurate and they are authorized to make claims on behalf of the copyright owner.
Similar when responding to a counterclaim.
This seems like something that could be cheaply outsourced to some cheap forest digital sweatshop to handle.
The status quo where YouTube is full of voluntarily uploaded material by rightsholders, other videos featuring their songs (for which the rightsholders get compensated) and even some cover bands getting revenue share, and most copyright-struck videos just get demonetised sounds a lot better than the RIAA simply trying to get everything taken down.
Judging by the amount of unofficial Santeria videos on YouTube, I don't think anyone would struggle to publish cop videos with Sublime playing in the background on there anyway.