Bungie is seeking over $7,650,000 in damages from a Destiny YouTuber who allegedly impersonated the company in order to issue a series of bogus DMCA strikes against fellow content creators.
The studio said in March that it was investigating a series of copyright takedowns on YouTube that had not originated from the company or its partners.
Later that month it filed a lawsuitclaiming that John Does had used “a hole in YouTube’s DMCA-process security” to impersonate the studio and sabotage the work ofDestinycontent creators.
In arevisionof its original complaint, which was spotted byThe Gamer Post, the defendant has been named as Nick Minor, aka YouTuber Lord Nazo.
Last December the YouTube channel of Lord Nazo was issued a takedown notice after publishing music from the original soundtrack for Destiny expansion The Taken King, whichBungiesaid infringed copyrights and violated itspolicyon fan use of intellectual property.
Rather than remove the video, Minor is alleged to have left it online until YouTube deleted it in January.
Bungie claims that, seemingly in retaliation, Minor created fake Gmail accounts to pose as the studio’s brand protection vendor CSC and send out a wave of fraudulent takedown notices targeting videos posted by members of the Destiny community including My Name is Byf, Aztecross, The Phoenix, and Promethean.
Nazo lied to us, started a Discord group DM with me, Promethean, Breshi, and Lorcan0c, and then said things like this, all while acting like he was a victim.pic.twitter.com/FG1JnjIJhU
“This case arises out of Nick Minor’s malicious campaign to serve fraudulent takedown notices to some of the most prominent and passionate members of that fanbase, purportedly on Bungie’s behalf, in apparent retaliation for Bungie enforcing its copyrights against material Minor uploaded to his own YouTube channel,” the lawsuit alleges.
It adds: “Using the confusion engendered by his own false DMCA notices, Minor also sent a counternotification to YouTube, specifically challenging Bungie’s identification of his videos as infringing based on the idea that the notifications may have been part of his own wave of fraudulent takedowns.”
The Destiny maker claims it is “entitled to damages and injunctive relief, including enhanced statutory damages of $150,000 for each of the works implicated in the Fraudulent Takedown Notice that willfully infringed Bungie’s registered copyrights, totaling $7,650,000”.
Related
Aside from relief related to copyright infringement, Bungie is seeking “damages in an amount to be proven at trial” related to allegations of defamation, breach of contract, and violation of the Washington Consumer Protection Act.
Bungie recently settled a lawsuit that willsee a Destiny 2 cheat company pay it $13.5 million in damages.
Sonyannounced in January that it intends topurchase Halo and Destiny creator Bungie in a deal worth $3.6 billion.
