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What are the penalties for a false DMCA claim?

The actual content holder, and the content provider are then eligible to counter-sue whomever filed the false takedown notice, applicable examples of this include:

OPG v. Diebold (2004):

https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2004/10/15

Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. (2007):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_v._Universal_Music_Corp (Overview)

https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/lenz_v_universal/lenzorde... (Court Orders)

There really should be more penalties for this.

Apparently, the notices say "under penalty of perjury", but at the very least you should be able to sue abusers civilly. I'm just not sure that is a great recourse for open source.

DMCA needs reform on this. There needs to be scale of fines for parties that issue takedowns based upon false copyright claims.

The part that's "under penalty of perjury" is only the statement that you are authorized to act on behalf of a copyright holder, not that your claims are true.

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