Bungie criticises YouTube’s “gaping security loophole” in takedown lawsuit

Bungie has criticised “YouTube‘s easily-gamed reporting system” in a lawsuit it filed against an anonymous defendant, which aims to identify the culprits behind a recent string of fraudulent copyright takedowns targeted at the Destiny community.

Last week, Bungie confirmed that a series of copyright takedowns targeting Destiny 2 videos on YouTube – including some of Bungie’s own videos – were fraudulent.

Now, the studio has filed a lawsuit against the anonymous party responsible for the fraudulent takedowns, in an effort to identify them and seek damages.

As spotted by TorrentFreak, the lawsuit alleges that the fraudulent DMCA takedowns were responsible for “disrupting Bungie’s community of players, streamers, and fans and causing Bungie nearly incalculable damage”.

“Defendants were able to do this because of a hole in YouTube’s DCMA-process security, which allows any person to claim to be representing any rights holder in the world for purposes of issuing a DMCA takedown,” the lawsuit reads.

The studio added that YouTube’s “gaping security loophole” and “easily-gamed reporting system” were used by the defendant to successfully cause “significant reputational and economic damage”.

On the lawsuit’s objective, Bungie explained that it aims to address the defendant’s “tortious and illegal conduct” and “frankly, to demonstrate to anyone else stupid enough to volunteer as a Defendant by targeting Bungie’s community for similar attack that they will be met by legal process.”

Bungie goes on to claim that it is entitled to “statutory damages of $150,000 [£114,725] “for each fraudulent takedown notice that wilfully infringed Bungie’s copyrights”.

In response, YouTube has provided the following statement to Kotaku:

“We take abuse of our copyright takedown process seriously and terminate tens of thousands of accounts every year for violating our policies, which prohibit submitting false information in a takedown request. We’ll continue our work to prevent abuse of our systems, and we’re committed to taking appropriate action against those who knowingly misuse our tools.”

In other gaming news, a current-gen update for Apex Legends is launching today (March 29).