{"id":73462,"date":"2023-05-30T09:01:09","date_gmt":"2023-05-30T09:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/?p=73462"},"modified":"2023-05-30T09:01:09","modified_gmt":"2023-05-30T09:01:09","slug":"bungies-donotpay-sleuth-doubtful-that-destiny-2-cheat-lives-at-copyright-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/?p=73462","title":{"rendered":"Bungie\u2019s \u2018DoNotPay\u2019 Sleuth Doubtful That Destiny 2 Cheat Lives at Copyright Office"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"watch-eye\"<\/a>Bungie\u2019s pursuit of people behind Destiny 2 cheat operation Elite Boss Tech, is pushing forward and showing no sign of stopping.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit began<\/a> in August 2021 with the aim of shutting down the \u2018Wallhax\u2019 cheat. By June 2022, Bungie had a $13.5 million copyright infringement damages award in hand, and suddenly cooperative defendants helping to unveil others involved in the circumvention<\/a> of Bungie\u2019s technological protection measures.<\/p>\n

Bungie Asks Court For More Time<\/h2>\n

Earlier this month, Bungie was awarded over $16 million<\/a> against a single defendant, with claims spanning copyright law, breach of contract, and civil RICO violations. <\/p>\n

Just two days later, the court instructed Bungie to voluntarily dismiss all remaining unnamed defendants and any named defendants yet to be served. Bungie followed up with a request for the court to partially reconsider, arguing that progress is still being made in its quest to track the defendants down.<\/p>\n

\u201cBungie continues its efforts to identify the unnamed Doe Defendants, and is actively seeking further information that may allow that identification, but does not have that information yet,\u201d Bungie informed the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cBungie served Eddie Tran, who is the only Named Defendant believed to reside in the United States, on February 28th, 2023,\u201d the videogame company continued, noting that the remainder are believed to reside overseas.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"eddie<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

On February 23, Bungie emailed each of the presumed foreign defendants with a request to waive service, with a deadline of April 13 to respond. Hoping that the defendants would eventually respond and in an effort to reduce costs, Bungie said that it didn\u2019t immediately press ahead with service proceedings under the Hague Convention. However, it does have someone working on the case with a track record of success.<\/p>\n

Tracking Down Anonymous Cheaters<\/h2>\n

Kathryn Tewson, a paralegal and investigator at KUSK Law in New York, rose to fame in January after a ferocious teardown<\/a> of DoNotPay, a company that claims to have developed \u201cThe World\u2019s First Robot Lawyer.\u201d DoNotPay says its AI product provides affordable legal representation but according to Tewson, the supposed AI amounts to a document wizard dressed up<\/a> in Theranos-style marketing.<\/p>\n

Being hounded by \u201cthe world\u2019s most tenacious paralegal<\/a>\u201d is also reality for defendants in Bungie cheat lawsuits. <\/p>\n

In a declaration filed last week in support of Bungie\u2019s request for more time in the Elite Boss Tech lawsuit, Tewson revealed she was the person who identified Eddie Tran and six other defendants across Europe and China. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll of the International Defendants operate incognito under assumed names and take other steps to hide their identities and avoid detection. Because of the International Defendants\u2019 intentional efforts to evade identification and detection, it is time-consuming and labor intensive to locate physical addresses for them sufficient to effectuate service,\u201d Tewson informed the court.<\/p>\n

Just One Person Answered Bungie\u2019s Emails<\/h2>\n

One of Bungie\u2019s emailed requests to waive service was sent by Tewson to a defendant named as Marta Magalhaes, aka MindBender, aka Bluegirl. The email contained a copy of the complaint, a reminder about the duty to avoid unnecessary expenses, and a warning that if the waiver wasn\u2019t signed and returned, Bungie would arrange to have the summons and complaint physically served, with Magalhaes potentially picking up the bill.<\/p>\n

A response from \u2018Bruno Silva\u2019 dated February 24 via a Gmail account said: \u201csorry i dont know what destiny 2 is, i dont play online games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tewson responded within minutes. \u201cOur apologies. There may have been a mistake. Can you confirm your address?\u201d<\/p>\n

As seen in the image below, \u2018Bruno Silva\u2019 supplied an address in Bucharest, Romania.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"bruno<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

Widely considered the most famous road in the entire country, Calea Victoriei is a major Romanian tourist attraction. The address provided by \u2018Bruno Silva\u2019 \u2013 Calea Victoriei 118 \u2013 is the home of the Romanian Copyright Office (ORDA<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Defendant May Be Trying to Mislead<\/h2>\n

Tewson believes that the address provided by \u2018Bruno Silva\u2019 is probably false.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on information received in settlement and my own investigation, I believe the information provided by defendant Magalhaes \/ \u2018Bruno Silva\u2019 is likely false and that the individual who responded to the email is the proper defendant in this case, and probably resides in Portugal,\u201d Tewson informed the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cBungie has issued a subpoena to Google in an effort to obtain information on Defendant Magalhaes (or Silva) sufficient to effectuate service under Fed. R. Civ. P. 4. The return date for that subpoena is June 15th.\u201d<\/p>\n

While it does seem highly unlikely that the defendant lives at the Romanian Copyright Office, email time stamps as they appear in correspondence suggest a time difference more closely aligned with Romania than Portugal, although other details tend to suggest the latter.<\/p>\n

Gmail and Privacy<\/h2>\n

Exactly what information has been requested from Google isn\u2019t unclear but in broad terms, Gmail and Google accounts in general can be a privacy nightmare for the unaware, even in the event Google refuses to hand anything over. <\/p>\n

Simply knowing someone\u2019s Gmail address can be the starting point for discovering their activities on other Google platforms that have nothing to do with email. In cases where users have previously contributed to certain Google platforms while unaware of the risks, those platforms can provide worrying amounts of location data. <\/p>\n

In this case, none of that data relates to the Romanian Copyright Office.<\/p>\n

Kathryn Tewson\u2019s declaration & related documents available here (1<\/a>,2<\/a>,3<\/a>,4<\/a>,5<\/a>, pdf)<\/em><\/p>\n

Image Credit: Pixabay\/succo<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

From: TF<\/a>, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.<\/p>\n

Powered by WPeMatico<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bungie\u2019s pursuit of people behind Destiny 2 cheat operation Elite Boss Tech, is pushing forward and showing no sign of stopping. The lawsuit began in August 2021 with the aim of shutting down the \u2018Wallhax\u2019 cheat. By June 2022, Bungie had a $13.5 million copyright infringement damages award in hand, and suddenly cooperative defendants helping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73463,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[308],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-torrent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/73463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}