https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210310/23083046402/court-allows-lawsuit-over-abusive-copyright-trolling-dmca-notices-to-move-forward.shtml

Last summer we wrote about an interesting case involving the latest evolution of copyright trolling, involving Jon Nicolini, who some copyright troll watchers may recognize from his participating in an earlier generation of copyright trolling, when he was a sketchy "forensic expert" for copyright trolling firm CEG TEK. These days, Nicolini runs his own firm, Okularity, which appears to have created a new form of copyright trolling. According to the lawsuit, rather than file lawsuits as the pressure point (as was common in the past), Okularity sends a ton of DMCA takedown notices to social media companies, and then once your account gets taken down, Nicolini pounces and demands huge sums to rescind the notices, so you can get back your account.

As we wrote over the summer, one of Okularity's targets was the well known Paper Magazine, put out by the publisher Enttech Media Group. Enttech said that Okularity sought to have Paper Magazine's Instagram account shut down, and then offered to "settle," demanding a pretty massive sum in the process. The lawsuit alleged violations of DMCA 512(f) which is the (unfortunately) mostly toothless part of the DMCA that is supposed to allow those on the receiving end of bogus DMCA takedowns to fight back. In practice, however, courts have mostly rejected all 512(f) claims, or made it so they're basically impossible to do anything useful with. Because of that, any time we see a 512(f) claim that has legs, we pay attention.