Atlantic records has subpoenaed online forum Reddit in order to find the person who leaked one of its songs. The Twenty One Pilots track "Heathens" from the soundtrack to Suicide Squad was leaked on the site, and the record company says it lost anticipated revenue due to its early release.
The normal procedure followed by record companies or TV and movie production studios when a leak occurs is to send DMCA takedown notices to the site or sites hosting the leaked material, asking that the unlicensed material be removed.
In some cases, however, there is a desire to take additional steps to discover who the specific source of the leak is, and that's why Atlantic Records, a subsidiary of Warner Music Group, has filed an ex parte petition in the Supreme Court of the State of New York. The petition asks the court to require that Reddit turn over the leaker's IP address.
Atlantic claims that the song was only available to a very limited amount of people prior to the leak, including band members, the band's manager, record company label execs and field staff. All were obligated to keep the song under wraps until June 24, when the record was scheduled to be released.
Instead, around June 15, someone uploaded the track to file hosting site Dropfile and then announced the upload via the Twenty One Pilots subreddit. As a result, the song leaked widely on the internet, and the record company made the quick call to officially release it the next day, June 16 — over a week before originally scheduled.
"Following the June 16, 2016, release, sales of the Heathens single, which were unsupported by Atlantic's carefully-planned marketing strategy, failed to reach predicted levels, causing substantial harm to Atlantic in the form of lost single and album sales revenue," the petition reads [pdf].
The original upload to Dropfile has since expired, but the Reddit post still exists. The uploader appears to have created his or her Reddit account specifically for the purpose of uploading "Heathens," so there is no additional trail of posts that could potentially lead to the culprit.
Dropfile has stated that it has not been contacted by Atlantic, and due to the company's policy of not tracking or logging visitor data, there would be no means of locating the uploader via its website.
"Files are physically removed from servers after 24 hours from their upload or when reported. After that, we have no clue what the file was. And we never knew who uploaded it," according to Dropfile.
If the subpoena is approved by the court, Reddit is then likely to comply, so it will be interesting to see if that revelation uncovers the culprit, and if the court action serves to deter similar leaks in the future.
