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In what is a rare occurrence, a film industry insider has been taken to court and accused of piracy by a major American studio.
Warner Bros Entertainment sued talent agency Innovative Artists, claiming that the agency had set up its own pirate site stocked with copies of DVD screeners that should not have been allowed to leak to others, the website TorrentFreak reported.
The suit was filed in a federal court in California on Monday, US time.
It accuses the agency of operating "an illegal digital distribution platform that copied movies and then distributed copies and streamed public performances of those movies to numerous people inside and outside of the agency", and says Innovative Artists began doing this from late 2015.
{loadposition sam08}The suit claims that Innovative Artists set up and stocked its platform with copies of Warner Bros' works, including copies that it made by ripping awards consideration “screener” DVDs that Warner sent to the agency to deliver to one of its clients.
"In some cases, Innovative Artists’ infringing copies of Plaintiff’s works quickly made their way from Innovative Artists’ platform to online piracy sites while those movies were still being made available to the general public exclusively in theatres," the suit said.
"The actions Plaintiff complains of are blatantly illegal. That illegality would be obvious to anyone, but especially to Innovative Artists, a talent agency that claims to promote the interests of actors, writers, directors and others whose livelihoods depend critically on respect for copyright."
Warner Bros is asking for a jury trial to decide the case.
Innovative Artists later issued an apology of sorts, in which it said, in part: "Warner Bros. is well aware, from its past experience with other industry entities, the sharing of award screeners is commonplace within the Hollywood community. Innovative was surprised, given its full co-operation with Warner Bros investigation, that the complaint was filed without any communication from Warner Bros without any prior contact with Innovative to resolve the claims.
"Notwithstanding that fact, Innovative is sorry for the improper sharing of the screener movies and will seek to resolve this matter with Warner Bros on fair and reasonable terms as soon as possible. Innovative will have no further comment on this matter."
