A YouTuber saved his channel from being shut down by identifying copyright claims sent by a fake Nintendo lawyer.
A YouTuber is a fake Nintendo He saved his channel, for which he had been working for a long time, from being shut down by detecting misleading DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) requests sent by his lawyer. Germany-based YouTuber Dominik “Domtendo” Neumayer noticed these attacks on his channel, where he published “Let’s Play” videos of Nintendo games, and took action. He was at great risk due to YouTube’s policy of shutting down the channel in case of three copyright violations. However, it uncovered fraud by examining fake email addresses and misrepresentations.
Fake Nintendo Lawyer and Misleading Claims
First, the fraudulent claims were allegedly sent on behalf of a Nintendo lawyer. However, Neumayer noticed that the requests were coming from ProtonMail, an encrypted email service. Contacting the real Nintendo, Neumayer learned that these emails had nothing to do with the company. Nintendo confirmed that the email address in question does not belong to them and that the content of the request does not comply with company policies.
Neumayer’s struggle did not end there. Although the fake lawyer stated that he withdrew his claims, he later continued his demands by impersonating official Nintendo email addresses. However, Neumayer foiled this attempt by examining the e-mail headers and the tools used. With Nintendo’s support, fraud is completely over.
This incident once again revealed how open to abuse YouTube’s copyright policies are. Neumayer argues that YouTube should develop a more robust policy to protect its users against fraudulent copyright claims. The current system discourages content creators from defending their rights and leaves the door open to malicious actors.