Bungie is suing destiny 2 The YouTuber who allegedly hit back at the DMCA removal on behalf of Bungie, against other streamers and the studio itself, filed false DMCA claims. Bungie’s lawsuit, filed in federal court on Wednesday, seeks at least $7.6 million in damages.
The complaint alleges that Nicholas Minor, who broadcast under the handle Lord Nazo, created two fake Gmail addresses that impersonated employees of CSC Global, a copyright management firm representing Bungie. The lawsuit states that Lord Nazo used those addresses in February to send YouTube 96 takedown demands, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.
The removal of videos posted by YouTubers My Name is Byf (which has 974,000 subscribers); Aztecross (615,000 subscribers) and Bungie’s own YouTube account. “A slight attack sent shock waves destiny community,” the complaint stated. “Content creators describe the chilling effect of false removals on their own work, saying, ‘I’m terrified of making new Destiny videos, let alone the ones I’ve already made.'”
Under the DMCA, companies like YouTube are obliged to remove user-published content that infringes someone else’s copyright. Such a broad mandate has enabled abuse of the provisions of the statute, filing some DMCA declarations to thwart commercial rivals or social media opponents on YouTube and elsewhere.
Bungie’s complaint alleges minor “exploitation”[ed] The hole in YouTube’s DMCA-process protections that allows anyone claiming to represent the rights holder for the purposes of issuing a takedown, without any actual safeguards against fraud.”
Bungie said Minor began his retaliatory campaign in December 2021 after serving himself with DMCA takedown demands, related to uploading the original soundtrack for 2015. Destiny: The Taken King, “Twenty-Six Times, Minors Sent DMCA Removal Notices […] So that YouTube instructs innocent creators to remove them fate 2 video or copyright strike, disrupting Bungie’s community of players, streamers and fans,” the complaint says. “This caused significant reputation and economic damage to Bungie for obvious reasons.”
In March, Bungie Alerted fans via Twitter that it was aware of the copyright removal demands and that they were “not being taken up at the request of Bungie or our partners.” The complaint cited a “manifesto” from Minor, also sent to the Destiny community that month, in which he admits to the false expulsion.
Bungie’s lawyers wrote, “The manifesto reads like a hackneyed ‘look at what you wrote to me’ from a serial killer in a bad novel.”
The lawsuit has been filed in the Western District of Washington state, where Bungie’s headquarters are located. In the complaint, Bungie noted that it “allows players to create videos”. destiny Gameplay” and upload them to YouTube and other services monetizing the content. But the studio reserves its intellectual property rights and the right to enforce them, in cases where there is a violation of the spirit of its User-Generated Content Guidelines. bulk uploading of minor The Taken KingThe complaint states that the OST violated those guidelines.
The lawsuit seeks at least $7.6 million, or $150,000, for each of the 51 cases in which Minor allegedly infringed Bungie’s registered copyright in issuing false eviction demands. Other parts of the suit seek unspecified actual and statutory damages “to demonstrate that dire consequences await foolishness enough for someone else to […] Target Bungie’s community for the attack.”
