Bungie are suing YouTuber LordNazo for sending 96 fraudulent DMCA claims

YouTuber LordNazo is claimed to have issued 96 fraudulent DMCA take-downs as revenge for having his own videos legitimately targeted.

Destiny developer Bungie is suing one YouTuber for posing as their brand protection vendor, CSC Global, and issuing fraudulent DMCA take-down requests to other YouTubers. This has been a long-ongoing story within the Destiny community as they battle to protect their largest content creators from abuses of the system used to protect their IP.

Nicholas Minor, also known by his online and YouTube handle Lord Nazo, was a Destiny music YouTuber who uploaded longer versions of game music by looping it in audio editing software. Bungie issued a take-down through CSC Global in December, describing Minor’s videos as “in violation of Bungie’s intellectual property policy.”

Minor, according to the legal filing, decided to take revenge by creating Google accounts with similar syntax to CSC’s actual email addresses, and then sending take-downs of his own targeting various YouTubers. He sent 96 in all, causing significant disruption to the likes of My Name is Byf, Aztecross, The Phoenix, and even the official Bungie account.

Once the situation reached Bungie’s ears, they explained to the community that they were investigating, and weren’t issuing the take-downs themselves. Perhaps funniest of all, depending on your perspective, is how Minor then used the situation he created to confuse the take-down situation, and attempt to get his own videos reinstated, claiming they were part of the fraudulent claims.

There are tweets going around featuring images of Discord conversations Minor had with other folks in the community, where he claims to be a victim himself. The man played a bit of a social manipulation blinder, all told. However, thanks to IP traces given to Bungie by Google and some deduction on their part, he’s been exposed.

Bungie’s filing is pretty brutal to Minor, describing a “manifesto” he sent out as a “hackneyed “look what you made me do” letter from the serial killer in a bad novel.” They lay out all his accounts and how they linked them – amusingly enough, it looks like a simple $10 VPN subscription might have saved Minor a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

Minor deactivated his Twitter account at the end of March this year, for “personal reasons” as can be seen in the cached version on Google. His Reddit account seems to have been purged of Destiny posts, though his seemingly-endless complaints about the Super Smash Brothers games and community are still there.

With the filing gone to court, what happens next will depend on a lot of factors. Presumably Bungie realises that Minor probably doesn’t have $7 million USD and change, plus legal fees, to pay. Hopefully they can come to some sort of agreement that doesn’t ruin this guy’s life forever.

Written by GLHF.