Nintendo of America has filed a DMCA subpoena in a California district court that, if granted, would order Discord to reveal the identity of the person who published The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom art book in February.
TorrentFreak reported earlier today that the company’s lawyers filed for a DMCA subpoena on April 7, 2023, specifically mentioning the name of the user Nintendo believes is responsible for the leak, along with the name of the Discord server where the images were allegedly first leaked. As stated in the US copyright law in Article 512(h)a DMCA subpoena requires a service provider — for example, a sales website or social media platform — to disclose details about the infringer.
Nintendo appears to have been aware of the leak for some time, as the company initially sent a DMCA notice on February 21st. Discord responded to the request, which contained multiple links, confirming that it would remove the content from its servers.
However, things didn’t end there as multiple users continued to share images from the leaked art book via private messages. Nintendo contacted Discord again a few hours later with a different request — an “immediate review and removal” of the server. Discord responded the next day stating that it had issued a server warning for the reported activity.
Now Nintendo — which is notoriously protective of its IP address to the point of removing various fan mods, hacks, and emulations — has issued a DMCA subpoena in an attempt to obtain the “name(s), address(es), phone number(s) and user’s email address(es). If it passes, Discord will have to comply.
One thing to take away from this story is that the leaks are probably real if Nintendo is taking this much action. As we mentioned before, we won’t be showing any images here, but many pages from the Collector’s Edition art book were leaked online back in February, and there were a lot of spoiled details.
