Bungie is taking Youtuber Lord Nazo, AKA Nicholas Minor, to court, over fake DMCA takedowns he sent while pretending to work for Bungie. Bungie is suing for close to $ 7.7 million and the jury trial is set for 2024.
This is an incredibly story of petty YouTuber drama, that ended up actually ruining the livelihoods of people at Bungie, as well as some Destiny players, and it all starts with Minor himself.
As Lord Nazo, Nicholas Minor would upload Destiny content on his YouTube channel, and was known under this name on reddit and Discord by fans and other Destiny players. On December 20, 2021, Bungie issued a legitimate DMCA takedown on the Lord Nazo channel, because Minor uploaded a track from The Taken King OST, The Last Stand, without following Bungie’s rules. Minor did not properly dispute this notice or delete the video, so YouTube instead would delete it for him.
Minor would start a new email, pretending to work for Bungie as an employee of their brand protection contractor, CSC Global. For the next few months, Minor would abuse the weaknesses in YouTube’s DMCA takedown system, and place fake takedowns on Destiny related videos that he and other Destiny YouTubers would upload.
Minor would then go online as Lord Nazo and pretend to be one of the victims himself, complaining to Bungie directly and asking them to resolve the DMCA issues. Minor went so far as to keep this charade going with the same Destiny YouTubers he victimized with fake DMCA takedowns.
Meanwhile, using names like David Thomson, Damian Reynolds, and Jeffrey Wiland, Minor would message and threaten the Destiny YouTubers he had sent the same fake DMCA takedowns to. Eventually, Bungie would catch wind of these fake DMCAs, as the community would go into an uproar over what now seemed like unfair terms and unclear rules.
Bungie would later certify with CSC Global that the takedowns were not coming from either company. Eventually, partly with the cooperation, and partly through legal means, Bungie got YouTube to trace the emails that were sending the fake DMCA notices, and eventually catch Minor himself.
Our source had suggested that the case is unlikely to make substantial changes to the issues with copyright law, but clearly, Bungie has lower stakes in mind. Bungie is planning to make an example of Minor, so that other YouTubers won’t try to mess with their reputation, and those of other game companies, by abusing the weaknesses in YouTube’s DMCA system.
Source: Torrentfreak, YouTube
