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Reddit Tells Label It Won't Cough Up IP Address of Prerelease Music Pirate (arstechnica.com)

David Kravets, writing for Ars Technica: Reddit says it won't give Atlantic Records the IP address of a Reddit user who posted a link on the site of a single by Twenty One Pilots a week before the song's planned release. The song, "Heathens," was originally uploaded on June 15 to the file-sharing site Dropfile. That same day, the file landed on Reddit. According to a lawsuit (PDF) in New York State Supreme Court, the file was posted to the Twenty One Pilots subreddit with the title âoe[Leak] New Song -- 'Heathens'. The Poster submitted the link under the username "twentyoneheathens," according to Atlantic. Atlantic and its subsidiary label, Fueled by Ramen, want the IP address of the Reddit leaker. The company said the file fell victim to "widespread distribution" on the Internet, so the company released the single June 16, a week ahead of schedule; the label also said the early release hindered a planned rollout on Spotify, iTunes, and other platforms. Atlantic says the leaker must be an Atlantic employee who was contractually obligated not to leak the track, which is featured in the movie Suicide Squad that debuted earlier this month. Reddit, however, said that Atlantic "has failed to show that its claims are meritorious." Reddit claims Atlantic has embarked on "an impermissible fishing expedition."

5 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Do they have legal authority? by arth1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, but the judge hearing the lawsuit does.

    What lawsuit? This is the label requesting the information, not a judge.

  2. Re:They disrupeed our plans! We want blood! by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 3, Insightful

    AN IP address is not an identifiable to a person. It may not even be legitimate (think TOR or Proxy Service).

    It is a fishing expedition. The ocean is big, they know its a fish, they are hoping to catch the right fish.

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  3. Re:They disrupeed our plans! We want blood! by BronsCon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What was posted to Reddit was a link to the file that was uploaded to Dropfile. The Reddit user who posted the link may not be (and, in fact, likely isn't) the same person who uploaded it to Dropfile; the Reddit user is, most likely, someone with whom the untrustworthy employee who needs to be prosecuted shared the download link.

    They need to go after the uploader and only Dropfile can identify the IP address from which the file was uploaded.

    --
    APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  4. Suicide Squad by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All these weird stories about the movie Suicide Squad.......it makes me wonder if someone is trying some kind of astro-turfing thing to give support to the movie. The studio themselves probably leaked the soundtrack. Maybe they hired people with sock-puppet accounts to complain about Rotten Tomatoes. The whole thing is weird.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  5. Re:They disrupeed our plans! We want blood! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That isn't Reddit's problem in any way, shape or form. The file was uploaded to Dropfile allegedly by an Atlantic Records employee. Reddit had nothing to do with it and are taking the right action by telling Atlantic to go get screwed.