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.
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.