>Considering a fake DMCA carries the same penalty as perjury (correct me if I'm wrong)
My understanding is that regrettably you're wrong, definitely at least in practice if not in theory. First on the theory side of things, Warner Bros at least argued in the countersuit Hotfile filed against them for abuse of takedowns that when it came to the DMCA:
>"The DMCA’s language applies only to impersonating a copyright owner or sending notices on their behalf without authorization; mere misidentification of the files being taken down or the works represented therein are at most incorrect ‘statements’."
Unfortunately the settlement Hotfile made in the original suit against it by the MPAA also ended its countersuit so Warner Bros arguments were not put to the test. If anyone else knows of a subsequent case that'd be good to read, but I can't remember any. If there's nothing at all then hard to say either way, but there is at least a strong colorable argument that it either doesn't mean what a lot of people think it should period or it's too ambiguous to have any real teeth.
And speaking of real teeth anyway, there do not seem to be any fixed consequences for perjury, and I do not think there has ever been a single prosecution for it in the now 20 year history of the law. In fact the sole and only victory of any kind I can remember of even a flagrantly abusive act of political censorship was years when WordPress won a default judgement against "Straight Pride UK" [1] (which had already gone dark of course). Lenz won vs UMC, but I don't think won any actual damages? And further the standard set there was that actual bad faith by the rights holder would need to be shown, which is yet another hurdle. I think only something like Diebold rose to that level. Edit: ubernostrum beat me to it and mentioned Diebold and that perjury is about who you're representing not what you're asserting too.
So at the end of the day there just has never seemed to be any significant consequences to abuse (or "mistakes"), and the result has been as would be expected given the incentives and interests involved.
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1: https://www.theverge.com/2015/3/9/8175491/wordpress-automatt...
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