Is there any way to bring a private prosecution for perjury under US law? IANAL but I have the impression that it's something you could do in the UK, and the legal systems are similar. Obviously it wouldn't be worthwhile for a typical site operator or even most hosts, but you can imagine that someone with deep pockets who receives lots of dodgy notices could run something like Cloudflare's Project Jengo as a public service to go after a number of obvious abusers of the DMCA process. Knowing that Bad Things might happen of you lied on the takedown notice might focus people's minds.
Federally, not since 1981. On the state level, some states do provide for a process that is recognizably analogous but still differ state to state, sometimes greatly. Also, states differ as to how direct a route a citizen-initiated complaint can directly affect the actions of the judicial system - some states use prosecutors as a gatekeeping mechanism, while others allow it as a process distinct from the prosecutorial system and so would skip over the gatekeeper and directly go to the judge. I don't know about most states, but I know that it's a mechanism that New Jersey, Washington, New Hampshire, and Idaho recognizes.
This is a sufficiently niche field of even criminal law that would require you to hire a lawyer to handle anyway. And usually there's some statutory limitation on what sort of prosecution a private individual can initiate. It's generally just not worth the trouble.
The DMCA does allow for a separate, federal, and civil cause of action to recover damages if the filer of the takedown notice knowingly and materially misrepresented the operative parts of the notice. 17 U.S.C. § 512(f) is where this cause of action resides. However, to prove "knowingly" and "materially" at the same time is a pretty high bar, although it might be possible to get a default judgment if they simply don't respond. Still, this is a limited remedy that most people won't be able to take advantage of since it involves potentially costly litigation and no punitive damages. It's not a prosecution of any sort, but it's sadly the best (only) option on the books that counts as relief, however limited it is.
The balance is so lopsided a workable strategy is to just retract the complaint if it is answered by a credible threat of a lawsuit.
It’s like stealing from the candy shop and if you’re caught, you just put back the candies you took that time. Not a deterrent for those who don’t care about how it makes them look.
