Bungie slams YouTube for DMCA 'security loophole' and lousy customer service

pcgamer.com:

Bungie has launched a lawsuit against the perpetrators of last week's «fraudulent» Destiny 2 video takedowns, saying that the removal of community-created videos caused the studio «significant reputational and economic damage.» The suit is also highly critical of YouTube's «easily gamed reporting system,» which it cites as the primary reason that the attack on Destiny 2 content creators was successful in the first place.

The trouble began earlier this month, when multiple DMCA takedown notices were filed against prominent Destiny 2 content creators on YouTube. It was unclear why the takedowns were being issued because they seemed to impact videos that Bungie's policies specifically allow, and making the whole thing even weirder, some of Bungie's own content was also targeted.

Bungie said last week that the takedowns were "fraudulent," and that it was working with YouTube parent Google to reverse all the copyright strikes that resulted. It also found that many of the requests were issued by a «bad actor,» unaffiliated with it in any way, who may have taken the action to retaliate for a recent round of legitimate Destiny 2 video takedowns. 

Now Bungie is retaliating itself: Just ahead of the weekend, the studio filed a lawsuit against ten unnamed defendants over multiple allegations including fraud, false designation, copyright infringement, business defamation, and more.

The lawsuit says that in mid-March, one or more individuals used a Gmail address modelled after those used by one of Bungie's IP protection partners to send out a wave of DMCA takedown notices against videos that weren't actually infringing on any of its policies. The same address was then used to send messages to content creators claiming that authentic