Bungie sues fake DMCA takedown request senders

A week ago, it was announced that developer Bungie, now owned by Sony, has been sending copyright takedowns to streamers. Or rather: supposedly shipped. Because it was unusual: Bungie itself had been warned, too. Now the developers are fighting back. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) copyright complaints are a ubiquitous part of the internet today. Rather, DMCA takedowns are standards for enforcing claims or as an antidote to violations. But these are increasingly being misused by people and organizations seeking to disrupt others for whatever reason.

About a week ago, Bungie had to experience this: because the game developer was dealing with DMCA takedowns for Destiny content you had nothing to do with yourself. Not only prominent content creators were warned, but also Bungie itself, which caused some confusion at first, as such random deletes are usually indicative of a “gone wild” or broken bot.

Lawsuit against unknown

Because Bungie is considered user-friendly, creative-friendly, and explicitly allows fans to create videos. Automatism could also be ruled out quickly because bots are usually easy to recognize. It is now clear that the takedowns came from a rogue Google account designed to impersonate anti-piracy service provider CSC.

Google has now disabled this and also rolled back the deletions. As TorrentFreak reported, Bungie initially criticized Google, but these differences have now been patched up. But Bungie won’t let go, so the development studio has filed a lawsuit against unknown persons exposing this fraudulent practice. It states, among other things, that both the community and Bungie are disadvantaged as a result. See also: Destiny – “Wild” Copyright Takedowns Pestfans and also Bungie Bungie, Destiny 2, Beyond Light.