In a lawsuit against 10 John Doe defendants accused of issuing fake takedown notices against Destiny 2 videos, Bungie blasted YouTube’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) protocol.
Bungie decided to write in a complaint filed Friday in US District Court for the Western District of Washington,
“Doe Defendants were able to do this 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 the purposes of issuing a DMCA takedown.”
The statement continued as given below: –
Despite the fact that YouTube and its owner Google were not listed as defendants, they are mentioned frequently in Bungie’s complaint. Because of “the Byzantine procedural labyrinth Google required before it would address the fraud its users were perpetrating, let alone identify who its fraudsters were,” Bungie wrote, the 10 Doe defendants have yet to be discovered.
According to the lawsuit, the bogus warnings were reportedly submitted in retribution by Destiny 2 players who had received real takedown requests from Bungie. Other YouTubers who had received legitimate Bungie takedown requests were allegedly targeted by the scammers, who then wrote emails to the victims claiming that the official Bungie notices were also fake.
My name is Byf and Aztecross, who have 967,000 and 595,000 subscribers, respectively, were among the Destiny YouTubers targeted by the bogus messages, which began on or around March 17. According to the lawsuit, Bungie’s official Destiny YouTube channel was also sent with a fake takedown notice. The notices were issued from a false Gmail address that was, upon information and belief, newly formed, and did not match the addresses utilized by Bungie’s brand protection provider for real DMCA notices, according to Bungie’s brand protection vendor.
After that, the Destiny community was perplexed and angry, claiming Bungie had broken a promise to allow gamers to create their own Destiny 2 streaming communities and YouTube channels. Members of the Destiny community were also made to believe that Bungie’s brand protection agent was also a fake, causing confusion.
YouTube also stated that copyright law requires the website to take DMCA complaints seriously and delete the content as soon as possible when someone claims their copyrights have been violated. YouTube also stated that it has staff and mechanisms in place to detect suspicious conduct, but that trolls and criminal actors can sometimes get beyond the safeguards.
Bungie is entitled to damages and injunctive relief, including additional statutory damages of $150,000 for each Fraudulent Takedown Notice that intentionally infringed Bungie’s copyrights,” according to the lawsuit. Bungie also charged the defendants with defamation of business, violating the Washington Consumer Protection Act, and breaching a contract (the Destiny 2 software licence agreement). Bungie stated that the company has suffered severe reputational and financial harm.
