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Comment by lmkg | Hacker News Reader

> Isn't perjury the act of swearing to something that isn't true?

Perjury is lying under oath. The statement must be made under oath to be eligible for perjury. And making a statement under oath is a formal process, dictated by court or law.

You cannot make yourself be under oath. Swearing something to be true doesn't count, unless there is a legal context that makes it true. Swearing in a witness in court makes that happen. Some laws (like DMCA) make statements in certain documents oathful. But it is the law, not the document, that decides that.

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It seems like "swearing" has been overloaded in your jurisdiction?

In my common law country, at least, when you swear something, it's an oath, and only an oath. We have a non-religious variant, no almighty God required, where you solemnly affirm to the same effect, and false information provided is perjury, punishable by up to 7 years imprisonment (if you perjured yourself in a judicial proceeding), unless you perjured yourself to get someone falsely convicted for a serious crime, then it's up to 14 years.

We also do statutory declarations, where you only declare it to true, but false information in one of those is still a crime, with a lesser penalty.

Oh, and we have a fun wee clause that maybe your jurisdiction doesn't? Where if you swear an oath, it can still be perjury even if it's not being sworn in a judicial proceeding. Only 5 years though.

So yeah, what does "swear" actually mean in the US? I don't get how you'd swear a DMCA takedown without your oath being taken. I figured if it was legit sworn, they'd do the usual "sworn this day X at BLA, witnessed/authorised/etc by Z"

Are they just trying to sound legal and scary, or is that format required in a takedown?

Not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but I've been an occasional customer of the judiciary sufficiently to pick up the vagaries.

You don't swear anything with a DMCA, the law says this in 3.A.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.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512

Ah yep, so they most likely did chuck in the "I swear, under penalty of perjury" to sound more intimidating and dramatic then.

Sigh.

A legal context like a “cease and desist” letter?

If I say "I swear under penalty of perjury that the earth is flat" in a cease and desist letter, even if I know that the earth is not flat, I cannot be found guilty of perjury because it is not a context in which I can perjure myself - I am not under oath in a court of law, and there is no other law that constrains my freedom to say such a thing. Title 17, Section 512(c)(3)(A)(vi) says that a valid DMCA takedown request must contain an assertion, under penalty of perjury, that the author is authorised to act on behalf of the copyright holder, and as a result making that claim falsely would be perjury. But the reason it's perjury is that the law says that the claim is under penalty of perjury, not that someone wrote "Under penalty of perjury" at the beginning of the sentence.

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