The response to your point is usually that no one plaintiff would have the resources to pursue their claims on their own. The expected value of bringing this kind of claim against a defendant, much less these defendants, is probably not that positive if you were to go about it on your own. At least this way you get $67k.
What is a better alternative? (Other than preventing stuff like this in the first place.)
How many of those 60k do you think would have been willing to put up thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars in advance with no guarantee that they would win? I'm one of those people and I certainly wouldn't have.
I'd guesstimate in the low to mid 8 digits. Apple apparently paid its lawyers more than $60M to beat Samsung. Ubuntu managed to raise $13M from 28 thousand people.
The other argument in favor of class action contingency structure is the alignment of interest between plaintiffs and attorneys. Although as already pointed out in other parts of this thread, perhaps the incentives begin to mis-align when settlements reach a certain size?
What is a better alternative? (Other than preventing stuff like this in the first place.)