Bungie suing individual liable for a number of fraudulent Destiny 2 DMCA takedowns

Bungie is suing the individual behind a number of bogus Destiny 2 DMCA takedowns.

March 2022 noticed Bungie and numerous YouTubers hit with a DMCA takedown. At the time, it wasn’t clear who was issuing the takedowns, however Bungie ultimately came upon who the malefactor was, and has filed a lawsuit.

According to the filing, the offender’s title is Nicholas Minor who goes by Lord Nazo on YouTube. Apparently, Minor was issued a takedown discover by Bungie on YouTube, went off the rails, and ultimately began focusing on Bungie and distinguished Destiny YouTubers.

“After receiving the takedown discover, Minor left his infringing video up for
the utmost attainable time – till late January 2022, when YouTube deleted it – and
as a substitute created a brand new Gmail handle meant to imitate the syntax of the e-mail handle CSC used for Bungie’s professional takedowns,” reads the swimsuit.

“In February 2022, he purchased and uploaded multiple tracks from another OST – this time, for Bungie’s latest release, The Witch Queen. When Bungie had CSC send DMCA takedowns for this second infringement and other infringing videos on his channel, Minor acted. He registered a second fake “CSC” email address and began to send out a wave of fraudulent takedown notices.”

Ninety-six separate occasions, Minor used the faux mail addresses claiming to be representing a rights holder for functions of issuing a takedown underneath the guise of Bungie’s “Brand Protection” vendor. This induced undue stress for harmless content material creators and “significant reputational and economic damage” to Bungie.

“The Destiny community was bewildered and upset, believing that Bungie had reneged on a promise to allow players to build their streaming communities and YouTube channels on Destiny 2 content,” reads the submitting. “Destiny neighborhood members have been additionally misled to imagine that Bungie’s model safety agent was additionally fraudulent, inflicting confusion amongst customers as to the authenticity of professional DMCA notices.

“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. This meant that Bungie had to work through several layers of YouTube contacts over a period of several days before it could adequately communicate and begin addressing the problem.”

It goes on to say within the submitting that Bungie is entitled to damages in an quantity to be confirmed at trial, and entitled to damages and injunctive aid. This contains enhanced statutory damages of $150,000 for every of the works implicated within the Fraudulent Takedown Notice that willfully infringed on registered copyrights, totaling $7,650,000.