It appears to be true, until you look at this graph: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/
The number of DMCA requests is exponentially rising. Many of them are bogus, too broad and request removal of the entire domain. There are no effective legal penalties for overly broad requests. If you operate a large hosting or web company, it is unfortunately becoming economically unfeasible to examine each request to narrow down its scope and/or to even determine its legitimacy, and the most cost-efficient route is to comply blindly. This is not to say that ServerBeach is a good hosting company: I hope it's a good lesson for them: turning off such a large customer without getting on the phone with them is setting a precedent that is suicidal for their business.
That might be also the end of DMCA. If anyone figured out that they can abuse the system, the hosting company may receive enough requests that it can go out of business and instead not comply until the sender take more serious legal action.
That's not a fee (which would disincentive filing DMCA notices in the first place), but rather a compensation for damages (which puts the burden of proof on the victim).
