Bungie has filed a lawsuit over a series of copyright takedowns sent to YouTube streamers who had been trying to preserve music from the Destiny games. DMCA notifications were received by not only players who streamed parts of the game, but also Bungie, which looked into the matter after being served a copyright notice over its own intellectual properties.
We’re aware of a series of copyright takedowns on YouTube and we’re actively investigating. This includes content on our own Bungie channels.
— Bungie (@Bungie) March 20, 2022
These actions are NOT being taken at the request of Bungie or our partners. Please standby for future updates.
https://t.co/xPY1EzkgTh
Bungie learned that someone falsely represented one if its business partners, CSC, using a fake Gmail address, to issue the takedown requests. A lawsuit in Washington State against multiple John Does has since been filed over the DMCA notices. Bungie has criticized Google/YouTube over the automated process that allowed this and the difficulty in getting a response (three days of emails).
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 to represent a copyright holder and issue copyright strikes, it has no dedicated mechanism for copyright holders who are being impersonated to let YouTube know about the DMCA fraud. As detailed below, this meant that Bungie had to work through several layers of YouTube contacts before it could adequately communicate and begin addressing the problem.
YouTube eventually took down the fake accounts responsible for the DMCA notices and restored the removed content. “If you’re looking to place blame, place it on YouTube for its sloppy copyright takedown system and Bungie for ignoring this issue for so long,” reads an email from “one of the people seemingly responsible for the rogue takedowns.”
Source: TorrentFreak (via Kotaku)