I think Google could have moved plenty fast enough to ever prevent a domain seizure. I think if Google had ever had creators in mind, they'd have put some money

I think Google could have moved plenty fast enough to ever prevent a domain seizure. I think if Google had ever had creators in mind, they'd have put some money into their legal responses to takedown requests, and they'd have also forced Big Media to play by the rules. The way I see it, it came down to Google being threatened with becoming a defendant to the infringement suits brought against uploaders. Clearly, the DMCA protects web sites as long as the process is followed, which Google could have afforded to do for awhile. Instead, Google would rather have made their own job easier by standardizing 'requests.' There's nothing in the DMCA specifying that some standard, machine-readable format be used. To get the media companies on board with keeping the takedown request process as automated as possible, they compromised.