The producers of one of four films which was released online in the notorious Sony hack of 2014 are suing the company for the revenues they lost as a result. The makers of To Write Love On Her Arms claim that Sony had an obligation to prevent the film's piracy which ultimately prevented its theatrical release and sent it straight to video.
The film is one of four that was released online during the hack, along with Annie, Mr. Turner and Still Alice, and was ultimately distributed on file-sharing sites illegally. According to one report cited by the plaintiff, Possibility Pictures, it was downloaded a minimum of 20,000 times. The producers argue however that the film actually reached many more eyeballs than that because that number "does not take into account the exponential 'spidering-effect' of one illegal download then generating by itself numerous other, untraceable downloads and each of those subsequent downloads."
Possibility claims that its out-of-pocket losses amounted to $2.6 million, given the film's $3.4 million budget minus the $800,000 advance the company received from Sony. The plaintiff argues that it is entitled not just to those losses, but the amount they project the film would have made had it been released theatrically as originally planned, a number they claim equals $8.7 million.
The suit raises the interesting question of whether a third-party can be held responsible for the loss of profits with regard to produced content due to a hack or leak. Possibility points to a specific contract clause in the agreement between the two parties which states that Sony is obligated "to protect the Picture worldwide on the Internet directly or through third party vendors, representative or agents."
The suit comes just as a new report indicates a sharp decline in the number of pirated online downloads in favor of another delivery method — streaming. The study found that streaming now accounts for 74 percent of illegal download activities for movies and TV shows. Torrents, which allows users to actually download the files permanently onto their computers, saw a sharp decline in use last year, with the second half of 2015 seeing a 19 percent drop compared with the first half, accounting for only 17.2 percent of online piracy activities, with direct download sites then contributing to just under 10 percent of activities.
Regardless of the method of acquisition — downloads or streaming — the results are the same for a producer like Possibility which gets caught in the crosshairs of an online hack or leak. Whether Sony and potentially other movie studios can ultimately be held responsible for a film's losses, however, will now be decided in court.
