"...Prohibited acts therefore include descrambling a scrambled work, decrypting an encrypted work, or otherwise avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating or impairing a technological measure without the authority of the copyright owner..."
It likely wasn't functionalclam.com itself that filed the request. Rather, the owner of a site that uses some ad tech hosted there is likely claiming that EasyList is aiding in the impairment of a technological measure they implemented, which according to this interpretation, is a violation of the DMCA.
It would likely be an interesting court battle, but apparently isn't one that the EasyList folks are willing to defend at the moment.
Anyone can send you a scary letter claiming anything at any time. Your choices are always A. Ignore it B. Delete your comment or C. Pay a lawyer $500/hour for advice.
People have trouble conceptualizing small probabilities, so that minimum threshold of choosing A and being wrong times "all the money in the world"[1] might be > $500, so it's always rational[2] to delete your comment if you don't want to schedule time with a lawyer.
So in other words, scary letters work because they're scary and make people scared. Sounds like the more people choose C the more these scary letters become self-fulfilling.
"...Prohibited acts therefore include descrambling a scrambled work, decrypting an encrypted work, or otherwise avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating or impairing a technological measure without the authority of the copyright owner..."
It likely wasn't functionalclam.com itself that filed the request. Rather, the owner of a site that uses some ad tech hosted there is likely claiming that EasyList is aiding in the impairment of a technological measure they implemented, which according to this interpretation, is a violation of the DMCA.
It would likely be an interesting court battle, but apparently isn't one that the EasyList folks are willing to defend at the moment.