Quentin Tarantino v. Gawker — can’t they both lose?
on January 28, 2014
11 Comments
Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is suing Gawker Media and related entities based on Gawker allegedly assisting in the distribution of a stolen film script:
Director Quentin Tarantino has filed a lawsuit against Gawker Media for copyright infringement. A week after declaring he would no longer make his next film "The Hateful Eight" because someone in his small circle had leaked the screenplay, director Quentin Tarantino has taken legal action against Gawker Media alleging copyright infringement for disseminating the script Tarantino's lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Monday, alleges that the web site Gawker disseminated "unauthorized downloadable copies of the leaked unreleased complete screenplay" and "expressly refused to remove their directions to and URL links to get the infringing materials." The director is demanding actual and statutory damages as well as Gawker's profits in the amount of at least $1 million. "Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people’s rights to make a buck," the complaint states. "This time, they went too far. Rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that Plaintiff’s screenplay may have been circulating in Hollywood without his permission, Gawker Media crossed the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire screenplay illegally."Not being a fan either of Tarantino's films, or of Gawker, I consider myself neutral. I read the Complaint. All Gawker did was promote the fact that it had links to others on the internet who had the script. That seems like a tough claim of copyright liability, but hey, presumably the plaintiffs' lawyers did the reasearch and think they have a legal claim. But still, just linking to others creates a copyright liability? Yikes, if that's true. Gawker is promising a fight:
