Oh, I agree that it's a completely toothless provision in practice, but claiming the copyright on someone else's work and then trying to take down the person's

Oh, I agree that it's a completely toothless provision in practice, but claiming the copyright on someone else's work and then trying to take down the person's own copyrighted work seems like exactly the sort of thing it was supposed to cover. The article you linked makes the point that at least one civil suit did give damages for dealing with a bogus DMCA takedown, but that it was unrelated to the perjury provision.