Obviously, there are more than 1000 big youtubers. The fee could be reduced and the budget increased by growing the union.
Millionaire youtubers can already afford high-priced lawyers if they want to, I'm not worried about that.
Who I am worried about are regular people who create content but don't have large followers and don't make to it to the frontpage of HN, but still get hit by copyright trolls.
The rich still benefit from organization.
Also, an organization may have legal standing where an individual does not, and can then deploy their lawyer-army. Where an individual has to wait for an issue to personally affect them, the organization will almost always have at least one affected member and can therefore keep up the pressure constantly, and eventually perhaps make the internet a better place.
They're saying that individual, successful/rich/"powerful" YouTubers can defend themselves against these spurious claims already, but that by organizing they would be even more well equipped, at less personal cost, and also make it possible for smaller creators to also defend themselves (with even less cost).
None of that has anything to do with any Vietcong analogy I can think of.
(Though in practice, it probably wouldn't be everyone - see the differences in how well-protected major- vs minor-league baseball players are.)
Edit: Maybe I've misinterpreted your comment, but I stand to the importance of publicity that may be lent by such cases.
Content creators don't use youtube for its video hosting. There are dozens of video hosting sites, many objectively better. Content creators use youtube because that's where the eyeballs and advertisers are, which also means that's where the money is.
And, 100k won't be enough to pay for one developer, let alone a herd of reviewers/lawyers to handle all of the DMCA noticed that will flood in, regardless.
I don't see how this doesn't get solved without amendments to the DMCA, which is probably where the money should be put.
I mostly agree with you. But $100k/month will definitely pay for a developer.