Bungie Sues Does Over ‘Destiny’ DMCA Takedowns, Slams YouTube’s DMCA Process

In our somewhat limited discussions about video game publisher Bungie, our remarks about the company certainly haven’t always been positive. And perhaps that colored my thinking when I recently wrote about a DMCA takedown blitz occurring among the Destiny community, with all kinds of uploads from fans being on the receiving end of takedowns on YouTube. But Bungie insisted it wasn’t them, a claim bolstered by the fact that some of Bungie’s own official videos on its channel also got hit with takedowns. Still, the statement from the company about all of this left some room for interpretation, with Bungie indicating that these takedowns weren’t happening at “the request” of Bungie, leading plenty of folks to assume this was an automated copyright enforcement bot or a 3rd party enforcement agency going rogue.

Well, I think we can safely put that theory to rest now. Bungie has not only sued 10 “John Does” over all of this, but also used its filing to take YouTube’s DMCA takedown process to the woodshed and absolutely beat the shit out of it. The filing starts off with a description of just what happened here: new Gmail accounts created to fraudulently impersonate Bungie enforcers of copyright, strikes coming from those newly created Gmail accounts, as well as a deep campaign by those accounts to claim that the actual legit Gmail accounts used for enforcement of Bungie copyrights were the fraudulent ones.

And then the filing goes in on YouTube’s process:

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 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. A disgruntled infringer or a competitive content producer, for example, can issue takedown notices purportedly on behalf of Disney, or Fox, or Universal—or even Google itself. All they need to do is: (1) fill out the video removal form… (2) have a Google account—including, upon information and belief, one created that same day and with fake information; and (3) fill out information and click verification buttons fraudulently certifying that they have the right to submit the takedown request, with no verification done by YouTube.

Welcome to the team, Bungie. Here at Techdirt, we’ve been shouting to the world about how wide open the DMCA notice and takedown process is to fraud and abuse for years. Nice of you folks to finally catch up.

The filing then goes into great detail about the harm this has caused Bungie. To the company’s credit, the filing details Bungie’s fairly lenient policy on what fans can share and upload when it comes to footage of the company’s products. Still, Bungie has also utilized a third party, CSC, to takedown some videos featuring music from its games. This fraudulent blitz appears to have occurred after those CSC takedowns. The filing also notes the deluge of negative press and public response due to these takedowns.

Between March 2 and March 16, CSC initiated and completed 41 DMCA takedowns of YouTube videos on Bungie’s behalf. All of them “related to music from Destiny 2’s original soundtracks,” the lawsuit said.

The YouTubers whose videos were taken down included the Doe defendants, the lawsuit said. “Beginning on or about March 17, 2022, Doe Defendants began submitting unauthorized DMCA takedown notices to YouTube for videos that allegedly infringed Bungie’s copyrights,” the complaint said. “Upon information and belief, Doe Defendants created fake [name]csc@gmail.com Google accounts in order to submit the Fraudulent Takedown Notices.” In the notices, the defendants “identified themselves as ‘Bungie, Inc.'” or “as Bungie’s authorized agents.”

Oddly, at least one bit of communication from someone claiming to be sending false takedown notices said they did it intending to get caught so as to spotlight how shitty YouTube’s DMCA policy is.

I was directly affected by false takedowns from “David Thomson” several months ago, and many others were issued false takedowns by this person over the past several years. I believed with enough attention, Bungie might have been prompted to step in. The first few channels that were hit by takedowns didn’t seem to grab anyone’s attention, so I had to escalate the matter.

Bungie, for its part, is simply not playing around with this. The company is asking for $150k per fraudulent takedown notice sent and is seeking to unmask the ten John Does it has filed against.

So, while this is all very strange, it is clear these takedowns weren’t Bungie’s doing. It’s also very clear that everyone hates YouTube’s DMCA takedown process.