A new wrinkle has emerged in Atlantic Records' quest to find the individual who leaked the Twenty One Pilots track "Heathens" from the Suicide Squad soundtrack in June. Reddit, where the link to the leaked file was posted, has objected to the record company's request to hand over the IP address of the user who supplied the link on the Twenty One Pilots subreddit forum.
As Tech Times previously reported, the Twenty One Pilots track "Heathens" was posted to a file sharing service, weeks prior to its intended release. Subsequently, a Reddit user posted the link to the Dropfile in its forums. Atlantic Records recently filed an ex parte petition in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, asking the court to require Reddit to provide the details of the user who posted the link on the Reddit forum.
Reddit, however, has fired back against Atlantic Records' request via its legal team, Harris Beach PLLC, which called the Reddit petition a "fishing expedition." They say that there is no proof that the person who uploaded the leaked file to Dropfile is the same person who posted the link on Reddit. They argue (PDF) that Atlantic has no evidence that the company has any relationship with the Reddit user and that if the leaker is not the same person as the poster, the record company essentially has no claim against that person, who may have simply come across the leaked file and posted the link to Reddit.
"First, it has failed to establish that it has a contractual relationship with the Reddit user. Second, it has failed to establish that it has a fiduciary relationship with the Reddit user. Because Atlantic has not demonstrated that it has meritorious causes of action against the unidentified Reddit user, its petition for pre-action discovery related to such user should be denied."
Although Atlantic has asserted that the link had to come from someone within or associated with the company because of the limited number of individuals who had access to the track, that assertion does not extend to the Reddit poster. Reddit also argues that Atlantic has shown no direct effort via Dropfile to access the information of the person who uploaded the track. When previously contacted by the press, a Dropfile representative claimed that it has no access to such user information.
The court will review the stances of both Atlantic Records and Reddit and make a decision as to whether the Reddit user's IP address must be turned over shortly. We'll bring you the result of that decision as soon as it is handed down.
