Starz Goes on Twitter Meta-Censorship Spree To Cover Up TV-Show Leaks (torrentfreak.com)

American entertainment giant Starz is continuing to remove tweets that link to a TorrentFreak news report about leaked TV-shows. From a report: Last week we posted a news article documenting how several TV-show episodes had leaked online before their official release. Due to the leaks, complete seasons of unreleased TV-shows such as "The Spanish Princess," "Ramy," and "The Red Line," surfaced on pirate sites. In most cases, there were visible signs revealing that the leaks were sourced from promotional screeners. The leaks also hit Starz, as three then-unreleased episodes from its TV series "American Gods" appeared online as well. The American entertainment company was obviously not happy with that, but its response was rather unconventional.

Soon after the news was published, Starz issued a takedown request through The Social Element Agency, requesting Twitter to remove our tweet to our own article. Twitter was quick to comply and removed the tweet that supposedly infringed Starz copyrights. We disagreed. The article in question never linked to any infringing material. It did include a screenshot from a leaked episode, showing the screener watermarks, but those watermarks were central to the story, as we explained in a follow-up piece. The good news is that many legal scholars, journalists, and lawyers agree with our stance. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), for example, responded that Starz has no right to silence TorrentFreak and also shared that opinion on Twitter, where many others chimed in as well. That's when things started to spiral out of control. Starz takedown efforts only encouraged more people to share the original story about the leaks, which is a classic example of the 'Streisand Effect'. However, Starz didn't budge and issued takedown notices against those tweets as well.

Comments

The “Starz effect”...

[Sebby]

Take the Streisand effect, and multiply it by six!

Leaks or Marketing

[alvinrod]

I wonder if this was a "leak" or if this was done intentionally as marketing. Up until this moment I wasn't aware that the show existed. Advertising costs a good amount of money, but why pay for that when you can just leak a little bit of content and then run around screaming about it in the exact kind of way that is guaranteed to draw attention to yourself?

Can the Streisand Effect be harnessed to achieve greater awareness?

Re:Leaks or Marketing

[the_skywise]

That's a pretty complex (and random) system you're thinking of.
If anything I'd say it's more likely that torrentfreak is in bed with Starz - posting the article on Starz' behalf, then Starz gets it taken down, then Torrentleak "blows the whistle".
Anything else is depending on sheer random luck that someone notices and writes a story on it and then hope that the story gains traction. Your ad dollars are better spent on something with concrete results.
I mean, taking that out to its logical conclusion - did the EFF leak the videos so Torrentleak would write the article so Starz would clamp down so EFF could get that sweet sweet outrage funding?

No - I think Starz' "social compliance security team" did their job so that Twitters' "patent and ethics supervisory team" did their job and Torrentleak got burned wrongly because of the short sightedness of both. Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity - the old adage which is even more true today.

Re:Leaks or Marketing

[DRJlaw]

If anything I'd say it's more likely that torrentfreak is in bed with Starz - posting the article on Starz' behalf, then Starz gets it taken down, then Torrentleak "blows the whistle".

It's even more likely that you are in bed with torrentfreak and Starz. Then you go on Slashdot and whip up the conspiracy theory outrage machine to spread the word amongst those who can't be bothered to RTFA while pocketing your filthy, filthy lucre.

After all, in bed it's the more the merrier...

Re:Leaks or Marketing

[gDLL]

it is FAR, FAR more dangerous to attribute to stupidity what is in fact malice.

No it isn't.

The reverse is true.

Re: Leaks or Marketing

[astrofurter]

"Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity - the old adage"

Hanlon's Razor is obsolete. Consider instead using the Silicon Valley Razor:

"Never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by malice."

Re:Why is twitter lending itself to this?

[DickBreath]

Capitalists understand that morals are a valuable resource, and as such have marketable value to be sold to the highest bidder.