Marvel
Marvel is searching for the identities of Reddit and Google customers concerned within the leak of dialogue from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Marvel says that earlier than the Ant-Man movie’s launch, film dialogue was leaked in a Google Docs file and that the hyperlink to the doc was posted in a Reddit thread.
Marvel on Friday requested a federal court docket to subject Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) subpoenas to each Reddit and Google demanding the identities of individuals allegedly concerned within the pre-release dialogue reveal, together with Reddit moderators whom Marvel suspects of being behind the leak. The requests have been filed in US District Court docket for the Northern District of California.
The Google doc was deleted after Marvel proprietor Disney filed a copyright criticism to Google. The hyperlink to the Google doc was additionally deleted from the Reddit thread. However Marvel nonetheless desires to seek out out who posted the Google Doc and who shared it to Reddit.
The brand new subpoena requests come amid a distinct battle in the identical court docket between Reddit and a number of other movie studios over whether or not Reddit ought to need to identify users who posted feedback in piracy-related threads. Reddit is fighting those demands for customers’ figuring out info.
On this case, Marvel is attempting to get the names of customers together with these behind the Reddit account MSSmods, which is a shared account for the moderators of the Marvel Studios Spoilers subreddit. The subpoena request factors to a January 2023 Reddit thread that initially linked to the Google Docs file containing Ant-Man film dialogue. Customers talk about the leaked dialogue within the Reddit thread, with some calling it among the many greatest film leaks ever or the largest leak within the subreddit’s historical past.
Marvel desires names, numbers, addresses, and extra
An Web Archive capture of the Reddit thread exhibits {that a} consumer with the display screen identify “Imaginative and prescient” kicked it off by linking to the Google Docs file. The preliminary put up stated the leak was primarily based on a subtitle file in one other language that was translated into English.
The hyperlink was apparently eliminated the identical day the thread started. “As we’ve got found that the information offered to us is receiving copyright notices, any future sharing of the fabric will lead to a ban for rule 3,” a moderator wrote in a stickied remark.
The subpoena request filed by Marvel subsidiary MVL Movie Finance seeks info “to determine the person(s) alleged to be liable for the unauthorized posting of the then-unreleased dialogue of the movement image ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania‘” to the Reddit thread that included the Google Doc hyperlink.
“The aim for which the DMCA Subpoena is sought is to acquire the identification of an alleged infringer (or infringers) and such info will solely be used for the aim of defending MVL’s rights below title 17 U.S.C. §§ 100, et seq,” stated a sworn declaration filed by Marvel Studios VP of World Safety and Content material Safety Matthew Slatoff.
Marvel is asking for customers’ names, addresses, telephone numbers, e mail addresses, and IP addresses. If Reddit has to conform, it might need to offer figuring out particulars on quite a few customers. The subpoena request seeks the next particulars from Reddit:
- All Figuring out Data for the consumer “u/MSSmods.”
- All Figuring out Data for some other consumer(s) liable for posting, enhancing, and/or sustaining the content material beforehand accessible on the Reddit Web site (together with consumer “u/MSSmods,” the “Infringing Customers”), together with, with out limitation, any moderator of the MarvelStudioSpoilers subreddit concerned in importing content material on or about January 20, 2023 to the Reddit Web site comprising and/or associated to the dialogue of then-unreleased movement image “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (the “Infringing Content material”).
- All Figuring out Data for any consumer concerned, between January 15, 2023 and February 15, 2023, in posting and/or enhancing the Infringing Content material.
Reddit “dedicated to defending customers’ privateness”
As a TorrentFreak article on Marvel’s subpoena requests notes, “no infringing content material was ever posted to the Reddit thread… The allegedly infringing content material was hosted on Google, [and] the thread merely offered a hyperlink.”
Reddit didn’t present a direct reply to the query of whether or not it should struggle Marvel’s requests when contacted by Ars in the present day however stated it goals to guard customers’ privateness. “Reddit is dedicated to defending our customers’ privateness. We’ve got rigorous processes in place to evaluate authorized requests and object when acceptable,” a Reddit spokesperson instructed Ars.
Marvel’s subpoena to Google seeks the identical forms of figuring out info—actual names, usernames, addresses, telephone numbers, e mail addresses, and IP addresses—for the consumer or customers who posted or edited the doc containing film dialogue. Marvel additionally desires Google to offer a “report setting forth any and all revisions made” to the doc between December 1, 2022, and February 15, 2023, “together with any Figuring out Data for any consumer who edited and/or made revisions to any such content material, together with any IP deal with(es) related to any such revisions.”
We contacted Google concerning the subpoena and can replace this text if we get any response.
Reddit is owned by Advance Publications, which additionally owns Ars Technica dad or mum Condé Nast.
