Earlier this month, a series of Fate 2 Videos on YouTube, including some by popular content producers and even Bungie herself, have been hacked. copyright takedown notice created by fake Google accounts. Bungie is now trying to sue those responsible and has called out YouTube for being duped by alleged scammers in the first place.
The Life Piracy takedowns began earlier this month, including soundtrack videos, cutscenes and eventually other content, including videos posted by Bungie herself. Celebrities with hundreds of thousands of subscribers such as My Name is Byf and AztecRoss were also affected, which has led to an odd twist that Bungie has changed its guidelines for content producers, which have traditionally been extremely loose.
“These actions were NOT taken at the request of Bungie or our partners,” the company wrote at the time, to assuage player concerns. “Please wait for future updates.”
Bungie is now taking the matter to court to find out who is responsible for the fake arrests, according to a new lawsuit filed March 25 and first reported by TorrentFreak. The complaint filed in the Western District of Washington targets 10 currently unidentified John Does accused of using fraudulent DMCA takedown notices to disrupt the “community of players, streamers, online and Bungie’s fans and caused almost immeasurable damage to Bungie.”
While the studio is still subpoenaing information to find out the identities of the scammers, in the lawsuit it believes the scammers may have been retaliated against. Life Bungie soundtrack videos were removed from YouTube earlier this month. The fraudulent takedown requests appear to begin a day after the authorized requests are completed and use a fake Gmail address very similar to the one used in previous takedown requests.
But wait, it gets weirder. According to the lawsuit, at least one of the people seemingly responsible for the fraudulent takedowns appears to have emailed some of the affected YouTube accounts a “manifesto” explaining why. “If you’re looking to blame, put it on YouTube as the piracy takedown system is sloppy and Bungie has ignored the issue for a long time,” it wrote.
The lawsuit also targets YouTube’s overall copyright takedown system, which Bungie alleges is gambling-prone and difficult to determine:
Bungie had to devote considerable internal resources to resolving this issue and helping players recover their videos and channels – an effort complicated by the fact that although YouTube has a form that allows anyone to claim claims to represent copyright holders and issue copyright strikes, but YouTube does not have a mechanism specifically for impersonated copyright owners to let YouTube know about DMCA fraud. As detailed below, this means that Bungie has to work through multiple layers of YouTube contacts before being able to fully communicate and begin resolving the issue.
According to Bungie, they first contacted a representative for their YouTube account on March 19 but received a response from the office. It then reached out to Google’s Head of Game Publishers and got another response out of office. A day later, it was still throwing emails in the blank until YouTube’s Director of Gaming Publishers and Commercial Content Partners finally responded and asked if Bungie had submitted a help ticket. It wasn’t until March 22 that YouTube responded that it had taken action against the fake accounts and reversed the fraudulent takedown requests.
“Thanks to YouTube’s easy-to-play reporting system, the attack was successful and the videos were removed (and YouTube users issued a ‘copyright strike’ which, as per YouTube rules, threatens viability in future of their YouTube channels) on the basis of a Fraudulent Takedown Notice,” wrote Bungie’s attorney. Although the lawsuit does not target YouTube, they say that starting civil proceedings is the only way for Google to share information about the identities of alleged pranksters.
DMCA takedown requests are a mess online, especially on YouTube. They became easily weaponized and lead to a lot of headaches for content creators, whose work is based on commentary, remixes, or parodies of the source material that they do not own. As Fate 2 failure shows, it can also create problems for service games that rely on fervent fanbases to foster the kind of interaction that powers them and keeps them alive years after launch. onion. It’s also a reminder that content creators ultimately have to let go of the platforms and game companies they produce content with.
