Again in March, a wave of bizarre copyright strikes (opens in new tab) rocked the Future 2 neighborhood. Not solely did it have an effect on a few of the recreation’s greatest content material creators, but in addition movies on Bungie’s personal YouTube channel.
It turned out none of them had really come from the developer however a “bad actor (opens in new tab)” impersonating two workers from the CSC, Bungie’s IP safety company of alternative. Now, that individual has allegedly been recognized and Bungie’s suing them for a whopping $7.6 million. Ouch.
Nicholas ‘Lord Nazo’ Minor is accused of fraudulently firing off 96 separate DMCA takedown notices all through mid-March (thanks, TheGamePost (opens in new tab)). In line with the lawsuit (opens in new tab), Minor was issued official copyright strikes in each December 2021 and March 2022 for importing the OST for Future’s The Taken King and The Witch Queen expansions. Throughout that interval, Minor is alleged to have created two separate e mail addresses impersonating CSC workers. He then used these e mail addresses to difficulty the false takedown notices.
We’re conscious of a collection of copyright takedowns on YouTube and we’re actively investigating. This contains content material on our personal Bungie channels. These actions are NOT being taken on the request of Bungie or our companions. Please standby for future updates. https://t.co/xPY1EzkgThMarch 20, 2022
The lawsuit goes on to say that in the entire kerfuffle, Minor was “participating in the neighborhood dialogue of ‘Bungie’s’ takedowns, spreading disinformation” in addition to making an attempt to file a counterclaim with YouTube, saying the official takedowns on his channel had been included within the wave of fraudulent ones.
Bungie claims that the state of affairs prompted “vital reputational and financial harm,” with the writer having to “commit vital inner sources to addressing it and serving to its gamers restore their movies and channels.” It claims its “entitled to damages and injunctive reduction, together with enhanced statutory damages of $150,000 for every of the works implicated within the Fraudulent Takedown Discover that willfully infringed Bungie’s registered copyrights, totaling $7,650,000.”
We have just lately seen massive gaming companies beginning to win these types of fits—like Nintendo’s case towards hacker Gary Bowser (opens in new tab), the place the court docket made one thing of an instance of the man—so it will be fascinating to see which course this one goes in.
