Bungie Unmasks One Of The ‘Does’ It Sued For Fraudulent YouTube Takedowns
from the oops dept
Back in March of this year, we discussed a somewhat odd story involving a bunch of DMCA takedowns for YouTube videos that included fan-content mixed with Destiny 2 music or footage. DMCA takedowns aren’t themselves strange, but in this case the makers of the game, Bungie Inc., publicly stated that it was aware of the takedowns but insisted it wasn’t them or their enforcement partner, CSC. Some of Bungie’s own official content had also been hit with claims, bolstering its defense somewhat, though it certainly isn’t unheard of for official content to accidentally get DMCA’d. Further solidifying that this wasn’t actually Bungie or CSC, however, occurred when Bungie went ahead and filed a lawsuit against 10 John Does over all of this.
Well, at least one of those Does has now been unmasked, as YouTube assisted Bungie by providing his IP address. That would be Nicholas Minor, who goes as Lord Nazo on YouTube. Bungie has amended its lawsuit naming him specifically, though it is unclear if Bungie is accusing Minor of filing all of the fraudulent takedowns. Ironically, it appears that Minor took these actions after becoming angry that Bungie and CSC took down his YouTube videos that contained Destiny 2 game music.
Lord Nazo, real name Nicholas Minor, apparently sought revenge on the development studio after CSC Global, which works in conjunction with Bungie as a brand protector, issued a number of takedown notices to him for uploading the Destiny soundtracks to his channel. The videos were uploaded in December 2021, and removed by YouTube a month later.
As reported by The Game Post, Minor allegedly created two fake Gmail accounts under the pseudonyms Jeremy Wiland and Damien Reynolds, posing as employees of CSC. He then used the accounts to issue DMCA strikes against popular Destiny YouTubers such as My Name Is Byf and Promethean, and additionally against Bungie’s own YouTube channel.
More is alleged, including that Minor used those accounts to contact Bungie directly and threaten them somewhat vaguely. For its part, Bungie is asking for a whopping $7.6 million as a result of all of this. Based on the filing for the suit, Bungie looks like it knows what it’s talking about.
Now let’s discuss briefly how this will all get talked about. If Minor did what the complaint alleges, he’s likely to be in a heap of trouble. Bungie will look like a hero here, helped by the fact that its own stance on fan-created videos is fairly lenient.
But what few will talk about is a point that Bungie actually made at the outset of all of this: YouTube’s DMCA takedown process sucks and is absolutely begging to be abused. Minor may have been found out, assuming the complaint is correct, but how many times does that not happen? How many times, in the name of promiscuous enforcement of copyrights, have such fraudulent claims at a lower level never been given this attention? We see this all the time and nobody seems to want to do anything about it.
That’s the real problem here. A broken enforcement system that is ripe for abuse.
Filed Under: content id, copyright, copyright abuse, dmca, false takedowns, lord nazo, nicholas minor
Companies: bungie, youtube
Comments on “Bungie Unmasks One Of The ‘Does’ It Sued For Fraudulent YouTube Takedowns”
I suggested
That a small company be made to be registered with by every person/group that has a Valid CR, with names and number for contact.
Then any service could contract with them to find out WHO is supposed to be responsible for SAID DMCA, info.
Some said, it wasnt a good idea. So whats the problem? Getting those that have a DR to register? Pay a small fee to be able to be FOUND if there is a DMCA?
Then the Other corps with Data being DMCA’d could have a location to contact Quickly, for a fee. And find out who is WHO.
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How do you assure that a company registration is valid?
How do you assure -separately- that contact information is valid? How do you assure that it remains valid?
Even barring intentional misrepresentation, entropy is not your friend; even valid information will eventually decay and become invalid.
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How do you ensure that a company registration is valid?
Comparison to other sources of information about the company, of course.
How do you ensure -separately- that contact information is valid? How do you ensure that it remains valid?
Require an update of information for any change in contact information, just like I have to inform my GP and my dentist if I move house. Easy enough to do if the admin team is made responsible for doing that and they have to update when they have.
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How do you stop people from registering content that isn’t theirs? For example, the TV news channels that rebroadcast NASA camera footage, then tried to get the originals taken down?
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Make false filings have real consequences for the filer. Whoever they are or represent.
I don’t think Bungie should get $7.6 million dollars out of Minor (who even has that kind of money?), but I do think he ought to pay a sum in the tens of thousands. Copyright minimalists like him are partly responsible for the much abused nightmare that is the DMCA.
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Abusing DMCA is a form of copyright violation, and the statutory limit for copyright violations is $150,000 per violation. That adds up fast.
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Abusing DMCA is a form of copyright violation…
It’s copyfraud, actually, especially in this case.
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Abusing DMCA is meant to come with a penalty of perjury, but to my knowledge it’s never actually been applied.
It’s all good having a law on the books that tells them that they should not do these things, but it’s meaningless if it’s not enforced.
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They aren’t actually exoecting that amount, or probably any amount, for that matter. It’s just how you play the civil torts game. The amount is there to make it clear that the violation is serious.
But wait, it gets worse
YongYea did a vid on this recently and the more details you know the worse it gets.
At the same time as he was sending out bogus claims, some of which were aimed at people he knew, he was ‘mourning’ about how easy it would be for someone to game the system and send out bogus claims and how terrible it was that (and once more for emphasis) people he knew and were talking to were having their content taken down because of the claims.
In a case of petty, spiteful revenge for having his own channel shut down after he kept posting game music that the company asked and then eventfully ordered be taken down after he refused he decided to screw everyone and if he thought he’d come out looking like a sympathetic person that people would be on the side of I can only imagine how well that’s working out for him now.
And yet somehow they will still pretend that the system is never gamed by the other side.
Not sure why the article (and other parts of the internet) are putting the blame on Youtube not stopping these fraudulent notices.
The problem is with the DMCA not Youtube. If Youtube want to keep their safe harbour protection then they need to process the notices, nothing in the DMCA allows a host/site to validate notices.
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misusing offered services shouldn't be acceptable
If government cannot build a system that is difficult to abuse, what chance do ordinary developers have to do it?
DMCA takedown procedures are easy to misuse, but any misuse should be used to modify the system to make it impossible to repeat the offense. If that’s not possible, penalties for misusing it should be high. 7.2 million damage award is pretty ok for intentionally doing DMCA takedown procedure misuse, given that the process needs to be the same for the all of USA. Thus it’s difficult or impossible to always tweak the practises all over usa to fix the deficiencies in the process.
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If that’s not possible, penalties for misusing it should be high.
And how much might you be fined under such a system? Billions?
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I didn’t misuse DMCA notice system. So the lion has no teeth.
And the people raging against the “copyright minimalist” bogeyman crawl out of the woodwork. The truth is that copyright fans have never truly been concerned with copyright law abuse.
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And the people raging against the “every user of copyright is a maximalist” bogeyman crawl out of the woodwork. You were saying?
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Case in point here, Exhibit A.
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Cute, now you’ve resorted to writing fanfiction of comments.
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We’re just waiting for sabroni to respond.