DMCA Copyright "Take-Down" Notice Stinks

Am I the only one wondering what Congress was thinking when they passed the DMCA website take-down provision? Basically, if you are someone with nothing to lose (and we see them everyday), all you have to do is serve a DMCA notice on the webhost of a site and it, by law, must be taken down...off the web, gone, kaput...and while the law does allow for it to be placed back up AFTER ten days if the site owner files an affidavit denying copyright infringement, the damage is obviously done. It is bizarre to think that in the US of A we effectively allow the total seizure of a business with no legal involvement, no due process, no real repercussions to abusers, and no meaningful validation process prior to using this "online death penalty". Do you get the idea that someone was asleep at the switch in Washington when this made it through? Bad law. Needs to be repealed or amended into something a whole lot more appropriate. We are on both sides of this issue all the time in our law practice, and sometimes it helps our client, and sometimes it hurts our client. But it still stinks.