As first reported by Torrentfreak, Bungie are now taking steps to go after recent DMCA strikes against both the company and content creators on YouTube by filing a 28-page lawsuit against 10 John Does in the Western District of Washington.
This stems from a report first published by PC Gamer noting that several Destiny content creators and even game developers Bungie themselves were victims from a massive DMCA copyright spree. The strikes got so bad Bungie had to issue a statement on social media noting they were not responsible for these DMCA strikes and they themselves also received some.
Bungie conducted an investigation and found that these takedown notices originated from a fraudulent Google account that was carefully crafted to look like the anti-piracy company CSC. Google were ultimately able to reverse all the takedowns and removed all copyright strikes for those effected.
Despite this, Bungie have remained critical of YouTube noting how easy it was for a fraudulant user could bypass their system and issue so many copyright strikes including the company who designed the game. Stating:
“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.”
“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 court filings also revealed that Bungie are also seeking a payout of $150,000 “for each Fraudulent Takedown Notice that willfully infringed Bungie’s copyrights.”
