Warner Bros sues artists agency for putting screeners on Google Drive
The suit alleges Innovative Artists Talent and Literary Agency are responsible for films leaking to file-sharing sites
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Your support makes all the difference.Warner Bros. has filed a suit against Innovative Artists Talent and Literary Agency, alleging that the agency had been placing awards screeners on their in-house Google Drive account, and thus allowing them to leak to file-sharing sites.
Deadline reports the suit references two films in particular: Rocky spin-off Creed and Chris Hemsworth-starring oceanic epic In the Heart of the Sea, which both appeared online in December of last year following the distribution of screeners.
Delux Entertainment Service Group, which provides "content security" for studios, notified Warner Bros. of the leak; stating that the watermarks on the pirated copies traced back to an Innovative Artists' client.
The suit claims that the talent agency would regularly rip DVD screeners intended for clients and upload them to a shared Google Drive account, which would then see the films distributed amongst people both inside and outside of the company; including managers, friends, and relatives. One occasion allegedly saw an assistant at a different company given access to the account in exchange for a screener not already in the database.
It is noted in the suit that Innovative Artists did cooperate with Warner Bros upon learning of the leak; shutting down the Google Drive account, which had only been active for a year, and providing user logs to the studio. These logs show that more than 20 people downloaded the films on the account over a five-day period.
Warner Bros. called the Google Drive account "blatantly illegal" in the suit, claiming that this fact should have been obvious to the talent agency considering its clients' livelihoods depend on copyright protection. The studio are now seeking monetary damages and an injunction that would prevent the agency from setting up any file-sharing accounts in the future.
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