Google Play keeps banning the same web browser due to vague DMCA notices

>under penalty of perjury

This is referring to lying about being authorized to act on the copyright owner's behalf.

    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.

This is a common misunderstanding, but if you read the text of the statute it's clear that the "penalty of perjury" only applies to having authorization:

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. -- https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 c.3.A.vi

It may seem like this system isn’t fair. It certainly isn’t. But it’s the best we have, because the system was not designed for the modern era. https://youtu.be/1Jwo5qc78QU?si=sZS6s53w4mZrJ3Vk

It’s lucky we even have a recourse like filing a counter notice.

I’ve wanted to make a non profit that offers up counter notices as a service. Basically, let people donate, and whenever someone’s project (like this unfortunate web browser) gets issued a DMCA claim, they’d be able to get a counter notice drafted and filed. It’s not cheap to hire a lawyer to do it, but you pretty much have to, which was the most unfair part. The companies filing the takedowns have lots of resources, but the targets often have substantially none.

That idea is probably too much work, but someone should do it. We need an organization to go to bat for creators. Or at least an organization that gives the creator enough legal rope to hang themselves if the entity making the claim decides to file a lawsuit, which is sometimes a real possibility. But the creator should get to decide whether to take on that risk without having to pay thousands of dollars first.

There are also many instances where DMCA takedowns are denied (not including the counter notice process). There's a bunch of public data on this here: https://transparencyreport.google.com/copyright/overview

The problem isn't Google per se, it's the inadequacy between a mass distribution platform, and an inadequate legal framework. There is probably, at any time, thousands of apps being wrongly shutdown, and thousands infringing copyrights.

The whole concept of these distribution platforms (Play Store, App Store, YouTube, you name it) is to scale beyond the capabilities of what even an industrialized manual system could do. Yet the laws (especially related to IP) are intrinsically interpretation based.

There is no intersection of such two systems that wouldn't massively tip the scale for one or the other party.

The only possible solutions are to

- scale down these massive distribution platforms (unlikely)

- accept their drawbacks and the business risk to depend on them (most likely)

- find an other way of defining IP, such as some forms of resistant watermarks (unlikely)

- move all distribution platforms to some form of DRM such that extracting content is impossible (most likely)

The future is not bright.

I mean, sure, you want everyone to get everything right. But if you're an app vendor, maybe try to help out the reviewers at least a little by not naming your app for a TV device "Downloader"? Think of it like defensive driving.