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Comment by FireBeyond

9 hours ago

> At least the DMCA in the U.S. has guardrails: not just anyone can send a takedown demand for everything. The requester has identify the works and declare under penalty of perjury that they are operating on the behalf of the owner.

You'd think so, but no.

DMCA came into effect 28 years ago. All those decades, all those billions of takedowns, and you don't even need the fingers of one hand to count those who've been hit with perjury for a false takedown request, because the number is ... zero.

You might misunderstand what the law requires. The person making the complaint (demand) only has to declare under penalty of perjury that they represent the copyright holder. It does not require them, under penalty of perjury, to be correct about the underlying facts.

See 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(3)(A):

"(A) To be effective under this subsection, a notification of claimed infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated agent of a service provider that includes substantially the following: ...

"(vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."

In other words: someone issuing a notice of infringement relating to a Disney work must declare under penalty of perjury that they represent Disney. They don't have to declare under penalty of perjury that the work is in fact a Disney work, that the title is correct, that the use in question is not fair use, etc.

This would explain why you're not seeing what you expect to see.