Bungie sues individuals behind false DMCA takedowns
Marie Dealessandri
Features Editor
Tuesday 29th March 2022
Bungie
Bungie has filed a lawsuit against ten anonymous individuals who sent fake DMCA notices to Destiny YouTubers last week.
As reported by TorrentFreak, the lawsuit was filed on Friday and includes charges such as copyright infringement, business defamation and violation of Washington Consumer Protection Act, with Bungie claiming that the fraudulent DMCA strikes caused the company "nearly incalculable damage."
The identity of the defendants is not currently known by Bungie, but the studio said that "it will discover them soon, via subpoena or otherwise."
"Doe Defendants were able to [send fraudulent notices] because of a hole in YouTube's DMCA-process security, which allows any person to claim to be representing any rights holder in the world for purposes of issuing a DMCA takedown," the lawsuit reads.
"In other words, as far as YouTube is concerned, any person, anywhere in the world, can issue takedown notices on behalf of any rights holder, anywhere."
The lawsuit describes how easy it is to pretend to be a copyright holder and send a DMCA notice: you just need to have a Google account and fill a form. Bungie alleges that no verification is done by YouTube.
This is how the defendants sent the fake strikes last week, the lawsuit continues, using a fake Gmail address which "did not match the addresses used by Bungie's brand protection vendor for legitimate DMCA notices."
The Destiny developer further criticised YouTube for the lack of support provided.
"Bungie had to devote significant internal resources to addressing it and helping its players restore their videos and channels -- an effort complicated by the fact that while YouTube has a form that allows anyone to claim
Read more on gamesindustry.biz
