(UPDATE: Bear with us. This gets complicated. Shortly after we prepared the article below for publication, Starz tweeted an apology and explanation to TorrentFreak.) You can find it HERE.
(Maybe this is over now. Or maybe it isn’t? Guess we’ll have to see.)
Yesterday, we ran an article from TorrentFreak about leaks about several TV shows including Starz’s American Gods. Guess who immediately demanded that a TorrentFreak tweet on the subject be taken down pronto?
Yep, Starz. Here’s the story:
by Ernesto
At TorrentFreak, we have been covering copyright and piracy related news for well over a decade.
We write about things that copyright holders are not happy with, and similarly, we report on bad news for pirates as well. The leading factor is always whether we believe something is newsworthy, or not.
Earlier this week we published an article that definitely fits that category. In the span of a few days, several TV-show episodes leaked online before their official release, which is something that rarely happens.
Due to the leak, 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, but other than that information remains scarce.
Among the treasure trove of leaks were also several unreleased episodes of the Starz hit series “American Gods.” This is obviously not the type of news the American entertainment company wanted to see published, but in our niche, it’s a big deal nonetheless.
As with all our news articles, we automatically posted a link to it on Twitter, to share it with the audience there. The tweet was just a simple description, with an image and a link to the news report. Nothing out of the ordinary, one would think.
The tweet
To our surprise, however, this tweet is now no longer available. Twitter informed us a few hours ago that The Social Element Agency asked it to remove the “infringing” tweet on behalf of Starz.
The social media platform complied with the request and as a result, our tweet is now “withheld,” or removed if you will.
According to the takedown notice, Starz argues that the tweet is infringing because it links to an article where people can see “of images of the unreleased episodes” and find more “information about their illegal availability….”
Read it all at TORRENTFREAK.COM
EDITOR’S NOTE: Shortly after we prepared the article below for publication, Starz tweeted an apology and explanation to TorrentFreak.) You can find it HERE