Did hardbin.com receive fraudulent DMCA takedowns?

The author of this post, who runs the hardbin.com IPFS gateway, received three DMCA takedown emails covering 7350 URLs that allegedly served infringing copies of books, and took the site down entirely. The author reports that none of those URLs appear in nginx logs over the available period, that the few checked returned 504 Gateway Timeout responses, and that a search of the logs for the IPFS hashes found no matches. The notices were sent from notice@ciu-online.net and signed by "Gareth Young, Internet Investigator," whose identity the author could not confirm beyond a slideshow that mentions a person of that name at Covington & Burling LLP. The post argues the notices contain inaccurate information, asking whether they are fraudulent and what can be done about it, and notes a similar pattern reported on another IPFS gateway since February 2022.