John Paul M. Joaquin Games 06.24.2022 03:Jun AM EDT

Destiny 2 Creator Sues YouTuber Who Issued Fake DMCA Notices to Other Creators

Bungie is going to court to sue an imposter among its Destiny 2 community.

The game developer is suing a YouTuber going by the name "Lord Nazo" for sending DMCA notices to fellow Destiny 2 content creators while impersonating its brand protection vendor, per Polygon.

Bungie seeks to gain $.7.6 million for "damages and injuctive relief," according to Engadget.

Bungie vs. 'Lord Nazo' Lawsuit Details

Bungie mentioned in its complaint against 'Lord Nazo,' whose real name is Nicholas Minor, allegedly sent Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedowns to his fellow Destiny 2 content creators in retaliation against the company and CSC Global, Bungie's brand protection vendor.

The complaint detailed that in December 2021, Minor received multiple DMCA takedowns from CSC Global for uploading tracks from Destiny 2's original soundtrack. However, instead of removing the soundtracks from his channel, Minor allegedly kept his video of the soundtrack published on his YouTube channel until YouTube deleted it. He also decided to pretend to be CSC Global and issue fake DMCA takedowns to his fellow content creators 96 times.

The document also revealed that Minor created a new Gmail address, JeffreyWilandCSC@gmail.com, in an intentional mimicry of CSC's email address syntax used for Bungie's legitimate takedowns.

Then, in February, he purchased and uploaded multiple tracks from Destiny 2's The Witch Queen expansion to his YouTube channel. He also received DMCA takedowns for these videos, leading him to create a second fake CSC email address, damianreynoldscsc@gmail.com.

At that point, Minor began to send fake DMCA notices to his fellow creators using his two fake CSC email addresses 96 times. He was able to do so by exploiting the hole in YouTube's DMCA-process security that allows anyone to pretend to be representing a rights holder for purposes of issuing a takedown, without any fail-safes against fraud.

As such, Bungie had a hard time helping content creators and players restore their videos and channels, leading them to devote significant internal resources to addressing the fake DMCA takedowns.

In addition to impersonating CSC Global, Minor also used his fake email addresses to send harassing emails with subject lines like "You're in for it now" and "Better start running. The clock is ticking" to the actual CSC Global.

Minor also made a "manifesto" allegedly created to confuse the legitimacy of CSC's valid and authorized DMCA takedowns, saying that Bungie wouldn't have cared if the small Destiny channels were affected and that Bungie ignored the fake DMCA takedowns for about 2-3 months.

Bungie's lawyers wrote in the lawsuit that the manifesto read like a hackneyed "look what you made me do letter" from the serial killer in a bad novel.

However, Minor wasn't able to cover his tracks, in that the first fake DMCA notices used the same residential IP address he uses to log in to both his Destiny and Destiny 2 accounts.

Furthermore, his Destiny 2 account uses the same "Lord Nazo" username as his YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit accounts.

Although Minor switched to a VPN on March 27 when the fake takedowns were being covered by the media, the damage was already done.

Bungie's Terms Against Nazo

Bungie mentioned in its lawsuit that it wants Minor to pay $7.6 million for "damages and injunctive relief" that includes $150,000 for each fake DMCA takedown he sent, not including attorney's fees.

The company also wants to have the court ban Minor from further infringing its copyrights or trademarks, and provide it with other relief the Court deems just and proper.