Bungie Files Lawsuit Against Individuals Behind Last Week’s DMCA Takedowns

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Last week, Bungie and Destiny videos were hit by a series of DMCA takedowns on YouTube that appeared to be caused by some issue with Google’s algorithm. It turns out that the copyright reports weren’t due to faulty code but were perpetrated by 10 individuals for some reason or other.

According to MMO Fallout, Bungie filed a lawsuit against those individuals last week for copyright infringement, breach of contract, and violation of the Washington Consumer Protection Act.

“This action arises out of a series of fraudulent Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) takedown notices that an unauthorized and malicious actor or actors (“Doe Defendants”) provided to YouTube with respect to content that supposedly infringed Bungie’s copyrights in its popular and successful Destiny franchise, disrupting Bungie’s community of players, streamers, and fans and causing Bungie nearly incalculable damage.

[…] Between March 17, 2022 and March 22, 2022, a malicious actor or actors exploited that gaping security loophole to issue takedowns, purportedly on behalf of Bungie, to YouTubers and streamers who had – with Bungie’s permission as granted in Bungie’s Legal Policy on Media – uploaded videos of their gameplay on YouTube.”

The company is seeking to recover monetary damages and all legal fees as well as an injunction against the perpetrators and their associates from further acts of copyright infringement and impersonating the company.