Well, the DMCA is supposedly only for taking down things you actually have the copyright to. I don't think that most DMCA abuse ever gets litigated and a lot of it consists of spam letters claiming that X is infringing on their copyright of Y, even when this is absurd. Alas, the law only has perjury when their claim to own Y is false, not when their claim to own X is wrong, however absurd that claim my be.
They may have other legal claims against PopcornTime for facilitating piracy on whatever basis, but I sincerely doubt they actually own any of the copyrights to the code itself, which is ostensibly what they claim when filing a DMCA claim. But hosts generally respond even to defective DMCA notices, so they've learned just to demand takedowns first and sort anything else out after the fact. There's no reason to expend any effort if they can get what they want with a simple letter and that's something I've learned holds true across most legal endeavors. It seems like a lawyer's first action is almost always to draft a letter demanding whatever they want on whatever basis, oftentimes getting results for a single, rather expensive piece of legal letterhead.
They may have other legal claims against PopcornTime for facilitating piracy on whatever basis, but I sincerely doubt they actually own any of the copyrights to the code itself, which is ostensibly what they claim when filing a DMCA claim. But hosts generally respond even to defective DMCA notices, so they've learned just to demand takedowns first and sort anything else out after the fact. There's no reason to expend any effort if they can get what they want with a simple letter and that's something I've learned holds true across most legal endeavors. It seems like a lawyer's first action is almost always to draft a letter demanding whatever they want on whatever basis, oftentimes getting results for a single, rather expensive piece of legal letterhead.