Quentin Tarantino is suing Gawker over script leak post
Famed director Quentin Tarantino is mad as hell that the script for his next planned film, The Hateful Eight, leaked and made the rounds on the Internet. In fact, Tarantino is so upset about the leak that he feels wronged enough to sue Gawker Media for violating his copyright on the material.
Famed director Quentin Tarantino is mad as hell that the script for his next planned film, The Hateful Eight, leaked and made the rounds on the Internet. In fact, Tarantino is so upset about the leak that he feels wronged enough to sue Gawker Media for violating his copyright on the material.
"Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people's rights to make a buck," says Tarantino's lawsuit. "This time, they went too far. Rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that Plaintiff's screenplay may have been circulating in Hollywood without his permission, Gawker Media crossed the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire Screenplay illegally."
The lawsuit filed by attorneys Martin Singer and Evan Spiegel at Lavely & Singer in California federal court emphasizes the whereabouts of the script.
Gawker has reportedly refused to remove the links to the anonymous URL where readers could download the script in its entirety.
The lawsuit seems designed to counter Gawker's potential defense of safe harbor under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The coming dispute also figures to raise issues of contributory liability as explored in the Supreme Court's Grokster ruling. [The Hollywood Reporter]