How Bungie Recognized a Mass Sender of Faux DMCA Notices * TorrentFreak

Earlier this yr, Bungie and its enthusiastic Future fan group have been plunged into chaos.

Utilizing the DMCA’s takedown course of as a weapon, individuals unknown despatched copyright notices to YouTube, claiming that the focused movies must be taken down for infringing Bungie’s rights.

YouTube started eradicating movies, together with some uploaded by high-profile Future content material creators. Different notices focused Bungie’s personal channels, inflicting confusion and frustration inside the Future group.

Whereas Bungie helps fan-created content material and permits movies to be uploaded to YouTube, a rising variety of followers got here to the conclusion that Bungie was someway in charge. With its fame on the road, Bungie went into investigation overdrive and later confirmed that the takedown notices have been all fraudulent and it wasn’t accountable.

In late March, Bungie took the weird step of submitting a lawsuit at a Washington court docket. It revealed intimately how two Google Gmail accounts have been crafted to impersonate Bungie’s anti-piracy companion CSC. The accounts have been then used to ship lots of fraudulent takedown notices to YouTube.

The dimensions of the disruption prompted was important and Bungie’s language within the grievance pulled no punches. Along with damages referring to the fraudulent notices, the corporate piled on with extra claims for copyright infringement, false designation, enterprise defamation, breach of contract, and violations of shopper safety legislation.

The speedy problem for Bungie was that the corporate both didn’t know or couldn’t show the identification of the offender earlier than submitting the lawsuit. A primary amended grievance filed by Bungie this week strikes issues on considerably by naming a single defendant because the individual accountable. It additionally reveals how Bungie tracked down and recognized the architect of the DMCA fraud scheme as one among its personal clients.

Bungie Will get to Work

Bungie’s early makes an attempt to acquire data from Google/YouTube bumped into hassle. The corporate tried to subpoena Google utilizing the DMCA however the chosen mechanism solely allowed Bungie to establish an alleged copyright infringer, not the sender of allegedly abusive DMCA notices.

Google initially refused to conform however after some work, Bungie began getting the data it was in search of earlier this month.

On June 10, 2022, Google handed over “important data” on the accounts used to ship the fraudulent notices, amongst them [email protected] (Wiland account) and [email protected] (Reynolds account). Google additionally offered an inventory of each takedown discover despatched by way of the accounts, copies of all correspondence between Google and the accounts, plus a log of IP addresses used to entry them.

The logs revealed that the Wiland and Reynolds accounts have been persistently accessed from a selected IP handle (ending in .241), traceable to Consolidated Communications, a residential ISP serving Rocklin, California. On March 22, the Reynolds account logged out of Google and fewer than a second later, the Wiland account logged in, suggesting the identical individual was behind each accounts.

However Bungie had extra. Way more.

IP Addresses Meet Offical Accounts, Bodily Items

The identical .241 IP handle talked about above was additionally used to ship abusive emails to Bungie’s anti-piracy vendor, CSC. Much more problematic was its affiliation with two official Future 2 accounts.

A kind of accounts made a bodily buy of the Future 2: The Witch Queen OST. That was subsequently delivered to a bodily handle in Rocklin. The acquisition got here with a bonus obtain hyperlink for an emblem, despatched to the customer by way of electronic mail. The recipient clicked the hyperlink and Bungie logged the identical .241 IP handle.

By now the web had nearly utterly closed however in proof phrases, Bungie was nowhere close to completed. The clickable emblem hyperlink was despatched to [email protected] and throughout the chaos of pretend discover marketing campaign, a YouTuber known as ‘Lord Nazo’ was hit with fraudulent DMCA discover, despatched by the Wiland Google account.

Apparently angered by this injustice, Lord Nazo fired a DMCA counternotice again at YouTube through which he criticized the wave of pretend notices and claimed his video was not infringing because it was a “transformative case of honest use.”

Lord Nazo’s counternotice contained his electronic mail – [email protected] – matching him to the Future account at Bungie. It additionally contained a bodily handle in Rocklin, California. Whether or not by carelessness or design, it additionally included his actual identify: Nick Minor.

From Unhealthy to Worse and Past

Way back to December 2021, then blissfully unaware of the chaos to return, Bungie was already experiencing issues with Nick Minor and his ‘Lord Nazo’ YouTube Channel.

Bungie’s anti-piracy vendor CSC focused the channel with a DMCA takedown after it printed The Final Stand, a observe from the Taken King OST. It took till January 25, 2022, for the video to be eliminated and on that exact same day, Minor created the Wiland Google account that was later used to ship among the faux notices.

After buying the Witch Queen OST and taking supply in Rocklin, Minor started importing tracks from the OST to his ‘Lord Nazo’ YouTube channel. Round March 2, 2022, CSC initiated a collection of 41 DMCA takedowns, 23 of which focused Minor’s uploads. A day later, YouTube terminated his channel for repeat infringement.

Minor took to Twitter and complained on to Bungie, asking the corporate to retract the copyright complaints so he might get his YouTube account again. On March 16, Minor tweeted once more.

“That is getting out of hand. Bungie must rectify these copyright takedowns and lock down their model administration,” he wrote.

Sooner or later later a wave of fraudulent notices was submitted to YouTube; 36 from the Wiland account and one from one other Google account, [email protected] (Averz account). Bungie thinks that Minor meant to make use of the Reynolds account to ship that discover as a result of quickly after an equivalent discover was additionally despatched from the Reynolds account.

Whether or not the switching of accounts performed a component is unknown however on March 18, Google flagged each notices as fraudulent and requested Minor to supply paperwork to show his identification. Minor then switched to the Wiland account to ship extra fraudulent notices and when Google put him beneath strain to show his identification on the Wiland and Averz accounts, Minor withdrew these particular takedown notices.

Stoking Controversy, Enjoying The Sufferer, Making Issues Worse

On the day that Google requested Minor for paperwork, he used his ‘Lord Nazo’ Twitter account to ship messages to Bungie accounts. “It looks like it’s not simply the music group getting hit. 2 non-music channels can’t be a mistake,” he tweeted. “Both somebody is making faux copyright claims on behalf of @Bungie or their CSC is uncontrolled.”

On March 20, Minor responded to Bungie’s tweet informing its Future group that the corporate wasn’t behind the takedown marketing campaign. “I simply knew it wasn’t you guys,” he tweeted again at Bungie. “I simply couldn’t consider that you just’d do that to us after 8 years. I’m so glad I used to be proper.”

Three days later, Minor directed a tweet at YouTube: “@TeamYouTube Folks with Future 2 content material on their channels have been getting hit with faux takedowns and even Bungie confirms the takedowns aren’t legit. My channel even acquired terminated due to all these faux takedowns. Is there something you are able to do about this?”

Minor then tweeted at Bungie once more, complaining that his movies hadn’t been restored but. On March 26, in yet one more tweet to YouTube, Minor requested for his movies to be restored as a result of the DMCA notices in query have been faux. They have been real, Bungie had despatched them earlier.

VPN Deployment Got here Too Late

At this level, information of Bungie’s lawsuit started to appear on-line, one thing that led to Minor accessing the Wiland and Reynolds accounts utilizing a VPN. However in fact, VPNs can’t undo the errors of the previous and on this case, in all probability wouldn’t have helped Minor get away along with his marketing campaign, even when he’d used one from the start.

For instance, Minor’s use of the identical electronic mail addresses throughout a number of websites began way back. As a part of its investigation, Bungie accessed information made public following the 2016 breach of hacking and dishonest website Nulled.io. The corporate discovered three electronic mail addresses within the database linking Minor to the faux DMCA marketing campaign.

The primary – [email protected] – was specified within the order for the OST supply to California. It was additionally used to concern the YouTube counternotice linking Minor to the ‘Lord Nazo’ channel, which in flip gave up Minor’s actual identify and bodily handle.

The second – [email protected] – was utilized in error to ship a faux DMCA discover and the third – [email protected] – was the e-mail handle Minor used to open his Future account at Bungie.

Bungie’s amended grievance, in search of a minimum of $7.65m, may be discovered right here (pdf)