Company Leaked Oscar Screeners Settled with Movie Studio

Warner Bros. has finally settled its case against an agency that “ran a pirate movie platform”. In fact, Innovative Artists ripped the Oscar nominee screeners and streamed them to associates via Google servers. As a result, movies ended up on torrent sites.

DVD screeners are often given out to awards voters and are supposed to be handled securely while the films are still in theatres. However, these screeners end up on torrent sites every year, causing damages to movie studios. For example, two titles leaked through a talent agency Innovative Artists 2 years ago in the following way: once the agency obtained the copies legally, it used ripping software to copy them to its own digital distribution platform.

As a result, pirate group Hive-CM8 obtained copies of the movies and published them online. Of course, the copies were watermarked and traced back to Innovative Artists, which was then sued by Warner Bros. The movie studio pulled no punches, accusing the agency of using unauthorized software to bypass the protection on the discs before streaming them on an illegal distribution platform.

Innovative Artists publicly apologized but was surprised by the lawsuit, since it had cooperated with Warner Bros. from the very beginning in an effort to fix things. Now the dispute has been resolved: Warner Bros. and Innovative Artists have reportedly come to a settlement agreement. In the meantime, pirate group Hive-CM8 continues releasing copies of leaked screeners, demonstrating that it can find other sources of leaks, even if one route of supply closes.