Last updated on April 17, 2026
An Arc Raiders streamer’s friend impersonated a legal professional, created a law firm website on the spot, and drafted a deed of undertaking designed to silence a YouTuber over a fair use video.
In March 2026, Australian YouTuber NessieDoes (Lachlan) received a copyright strike on one of his videos from a small Arc Raiders streamer known as Manhands (also known as ManhandsTTV, who streams at twitch.tv/manhands and operates a personal site at manhands.tv). The video featured a brief, lighthearted in-game encounter between the two players and comprised roughly 13% of an 18-minute video. Manhands did not appear to be upset at the time of the encounter and even left a positive comment on the video after it was published.
What followed was not a straightforward copyright dispute. It involved a fabricated law firm, a friend impersonating a legal professional, a coercive legal document, botted social media engagement, and an attempt to pressure NessieDoes into signing what amounted to an online restraining order, all to resolve a situation that could have been settled with a single direct message. The full timeline, including both voice calls and all supporting evidence, is documented in Theb’s video covering the dispute.
The Copyright Strike
The encounter between NessieDoes and Manhands took place in Arc Raiders, a PvPvE extraction shooter. NessieDoes, who creates trolling and comedy content in the game, ran into Manhands during a session. The interaction was brief, harmless, and mutual. Manhands did not express any displeasure at the time. He later left a comment on the video engaging positively with the content.
Approximately four hours after leaving that comment, NessieDoes received a copyright strike. The strike claimed ownership of the entire video, despite Manhands’ footage comprising roughly 145 seconds of an 18-minute piece. The content was transformative, included multiple disclaimers (before and after the encounter, in the description, and in the comments), and did not portray Manhands negatively.
NessieDoes, concerned that Manhands’ recent account compromises may have been responsible for the strike, reached out via Discord to confirm whether it was genuine. Manhands confirmed it was, and invited NessieDoes to join a voice call with himself and a member of his “team.”
Enter Civ: The “Professional Lawyer”
The individual who joined the call alongside Manhands was a user known as Civ. His Discord profile, under the username Civlington, listed his occupation as “Professional Lawyer — Legal Counsel — Document Preparation.” His Discord bio also displayed a link to a website: signalsouthlegal.com, presented as the online presence of a firm called Signal & South Legal.
During the call, Civ spoke with apparent authority on Australian copyright law, referenced “fair dealing” (the Australian equivalent of fair use), and represented himself as someone with professional expertise in content creator copyright disputes. He stated that there were “three content copyright specialists at our firm.” NessieDoes, understandably, took this at face value. There was no obvious reason in the moment to doubt it.
The call concluded with an agreement: NessieDoes would change the thumbnail and title of his video to remove any reference to Manhands, and in return, the copyright strike would be removed.
The Investigation
Following the call, NessieDoes and his associate Theb (@thebsot) began investigating Civ’s claims. What they found was comprehensive and damning.
Civ’s Online Presence
Civ operates across multiple platforms under several names. His YouTube channel, Civ’s Piano (@CivsPiano), has approximately 1,070 subscribers and is roughly 15 years old. His Twitch account, Civris, shows 10,600 followers. His Twitter/X account, also under the name Civ, displays nearly 20,000 followers across just seven posts.
Analysis of his Twitch metrics revealed patterns consistent with artificial inflation. His follower growth showed sudden spikes rather than organic accumulation. His viewer graphs displayed characteristics typical of viewbotting, with sharp, uniform drops and recoveries rather than the gradual fluctuations seen in legitimate audiences. An average of 350 concurrent viewers alongside minimal follower growth per stream is, to put it plainly, not how real audiences behave.
Signal & South Legal
The website signalsouthlegal.com, which Civ linked in his Discord bio as the online home of his supposed law firm, raised immediate red flags upon examination.
The domain’s WHOIS records showed that it was registered on the same day as the voice call with NessieDoes. The registrant’s name was listed as Chris, consistent with the first name Civ had given during the call. Critically, the WHOIS data indicated that the registrant was located in the United States, not in Adelaide, South Australia, where the website claimed the firm was based.
The website itself contained no information about any individual lawyers. The contact phone number listed was, remarkably, 1234567. Remnants of AI-generated content were visible on the site, including a “Suggested future topics” section that appeared to be a ChatGPT prompt output left on the page, featuring suggestions such as “Copyright versus trade: which protection do you need?” and “What counts as fair dealing in Australia.”
Perhaps most telling of all, the website’s own footer contained the following disclaimer:
“Signal & South Legal is a brand name used for this informational website. It is not a regulated law practice and does not provide legal advice, legal representation, or regulated legal services. Use of this website does not create any professional-client relationship. Obtain advice from a qualified Australian lawyer or other appropriate professional before acting.”
This disclaimer was present on the same website that Civ was linking from a Discord profile describing himself as a “Professional Lawyer” while actively providing legal guidance and drafting legal documents in that capacity.
The Staff Page
Civ was presented to NessieDoes during the calls as an independent legal professional. At no point was it disclosed that he was a member of Manhands’ own team. However, Manhands’ personal website at manhands.tv/staff.php (archived) tells a different story entirely. Civ is publicly listed as an Admin with the title “More important than lead mod.” His bio on the page states that “when he isn’t being a diligent and active moderator or building websites for Manhands he is busy being good at everything else.”
The person who was introduced to NessieDoes as a professional lawyer, who cited Australian copyright law, who drafted a deed of undertaking, and who claimed to represent a firm of three copyright specialists, is by his own team’s public admission Manhands’ website builder and server moderator. He is not a lawyer. He is not independent. He builds websites for the person whose interests he was purporting to represent in a legal capacity. Civ also operates streamy.tools, a streaming dashboard tool, which is listed among the partner services on manhands.tv. His background is in web development, not law.
It is also worth noting that Manhands’ staff page describes him as “Adelaide-based,” which provides a clear explanation for why the fabricated law firm Signal & South Legal claimed to operate out of Adelaide. The fake firm was not set up to reflect where Civ is based. It was set up to match the location of the person whose interests he was representing.
The Botted YouTube Comment
At the beginning of the original NessieDoes video, a hate comment had appeared reading “Guy would snipe his own nan for a sniff of relevance.” Within one hour, the comment had accumulated approximately 96 likes, significantly outpacing the previous top comment which had reached around 70 likes over two days.
The profile picture and name attached to the comment matched Civ’s accounts. The same individual who was presenting himself as Manhands’ legal representative had been botting likes on a hostile comment under NessieDoes’ video.
The Deed of Undertaking
Following the second call, Civ sent NessieDoes a PDF document described as a “deed of undertaking.” The document, which NessieDoes was expected to sign and return, contained terms that went far beyond the scope of any reasonable resolution to a thumbnail dispute.
The document included clauses that would have prevented NessieDoes from using Manhands’ content, likeness, name, or image in any future material. It prohibited NessieDoes from interacting with Manhands online without prior written consent. It would have required NessieDoes to remove existing material, including the video itself, directly contradicting the verbal agreement that the video could remain up once the thumbnail and title were changed. It required NessieDoes to sign a written acknowledgement that Manhands had been subjected to harassment, despite Manhands having provided no evidence of any harassment when asked on multiple occasions. It contained a clause stating that breach of the deed “may cause harm that is not adequately compensable by damages alone.” And it included a provision that the written document superseded all prior oral agreements, effectively nullifying the verbal agreement reached in the call.
The document claimed to be governed by the laws of South Australia, a jurisdiction in which Civ does not appear to reside.
The broader picture is damning not because any single element is conclusive in isolation, but because of the totality. The website was registered hours before it was needed. Its own footer explicitly disclaims it is not a law practice, yet the person who created it was simultaneously representing himself as a professional lawyer, citing Australian law with apparent authority, and drafting legal documents in that capacity. The site bears all the hallmarks of having been thrown together in minutes: internal links point to raw .html files rather than clean directory paths, AI-generated content suggestions were left visible on the page, and the contact phone number is a placeholder. This is not a website that was built to operate as a real business. It was built to be linked in a Discord bio for long enough to intimidate someone into signing a document.
NessieDoes did not sign the document. He instead filed a counter-claim against the copyright strike through YouTube’s standard dispute process. Upon learning this, Manhands removed the strike himself, framing it as a “gesture of goodwill,” while simultaneously claiming that a verbal agreement from the call remained binding. No such verbal agreement was made. The full, unedited recording of the call, linked publicly by NessieDoes, confirms this.
The Legal Position
In the United Kingdom, holding yourself out as a solicitor, barrister, or legal professional when you are not entitled to do so is a criminal offence under the Legal Services Act 2007. Prosecutions for this type of conduct do occur and can result in significant penalties.
In Australia, the position is at least as serious. Sections 10 and 11 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law, which South Australia adopted on 1 July 2022, directly address this conduct. Section 10 prohibits unqualified entities from engaging in legal practice, carrying a maximum penalty of 250 penalty units (currently $27,500 AUD) or imprisonment for two years, or both. Section 11 separately prohibits unqualified entities from advertising or making representations that they are entitled to engage in legal practice, carrying a maximum penalty of 250 penalty units. These are not theoretical provisions. In 2024, a man in New South Wales was convicted on six counts under sections 10 and 11 after falsely presenting himself as a qualified lawyer and was sentenced to a nine-month intensive correction order.
Civ’s conduct was not limited to a throwaway comment or a joke in a Discord bio. He represented himself as a professional lawyer across multiple interactions. He cited jurisdiction-specific Australian law. He drafted and distributed a legal document. He claimed to operate a law firm with multiple specialists. He created a website to support that claim. He then used that fabricated authority to pressure someone into signing a document that would have stripped them of their rights. The totality of that conduct, directed at an Australian resident in the context of a real dispute with real consequences, falls squarely within the type of behaviour that sections 10 and 11 exist to prevent.
The appropriate regulatory bodies for complaints about unauthorised legal practice in South Australia, where Signal & South Legal claimed to be based, are the Law Society of South Australia and the Legal Profession Conduct Commissioner.
A Note on Conduct
NessieDoes has consistently handled this situation with restraint. He reached out privately before escalating. He agreed to change his thumbnail and title despite the copyright strike being demonstrably false. He engaged in good faith across two voice calls. He declined to sign a document that would have stripped him of his rights, and he pursued the correct legal avenue through YouTube’s counter-claim process.
Summary
What began as a lighthearted gaming clip escalated into a false copyright strike, two voice calls with a fabricated legal professional, a coercive deed of undertaking, botted social media engagement, and an attempt to silence a content creator through intimidation. The copyright system was abused, a fake law firm was created on the spot to lend credibility to the scheme, and a legal document was drafted and sent by someone with no legal qualifications or authority to do so.
Arc Raiders content creators, and content creators more broadly, should be aware that this type of conduct is not merely poor behaviour. Impersonating a legal professional to intimidate, coerce, or silence someone may constitute a criminal offence in multiple jurisdictions. If you find yourself on the receiving end of similar conduct, seek proper legal advice and report it to the relevant regulatory authority.
NessieDoes, NessieDoes Arc Raiders, Manhands Arc Raiders, ManhandsTTV, manhands.tv, Civris, Civlington, Civ’s Piano, CivsPiano, Signal & South Legal, signalsouthlegal.com, streamy.tools, Theb, thebsot, Arc Raiders copyright strike, Arc Raiders streamer drama, fake lawyer copyright dispute
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