Legal Issues about Movie Spoilers

> Where do I stand legally? Can the studio come after me?

That is a pretty silly question in a strange way. If you make someone mad enough that they could are willing to sue you without caring about whether or not they are going to win, anyone can come after you for any reason. That is the nature of the beast.

You can be sued by anyone at anytime for anything. The deeper the pockets you anger, the more likely it becomes. Start talking garbage about the Church of Scientology and watch what happens for if you want an example of that.

The question that cuts more to the source is "Could they sue and win?" No easy answer there.

From a copyright standpoint, there isn't much to fear. As long as you don't do anything stupid like post the script itself or portions thereof, I doubt that a court would rule that offering a spoiler is an infringement unto itself.

However, there might be enough controversy here to warrant the studios rolling the dice. There was much talk about that with "Million Dollar Baby" some time ago. You can read about that here:

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hilden/20050222.html

One strange problem you could have is if the spoiler turns out to be wrong, it could be a defamation issue. Since corporations can be defamed, as can the people who created the movie, if your spoiler is wrong, they can prove you had reason to know it might be wrong and think that the spoiler hurt their reputation, they could sue over that.

There is also the possibility that they could claim tortuous interference, which is when one interferes with another parties business or contractual relationships. It would appear to me to be a longshot in this case due to the nature of what you're doing and that they would have to prove you both had knowledge of and wished to interfere with contracts they had, but once again, it might be something they could go after.

There could also be other areas of business law this might fall under, business law really is not my area of expertise so I'll leave that to anyone else who wants to take a stab.

A more likely scenario is that the studios subpoena you to find out who submitted the work to you and how your hands on it. This could turn your life upside down almost as bad as a lawsuit. Shield laws might be able to help you protect your source's information (even though you say it is anonymous, you still, most likely, have to have some information on them, such as IP address) but those vary state to state and only 32 states even have them at all.

My advice is this. If you post this spoiler, especially if you are the first, expect trouble. The pockets are too deep, the potential loss to the studios too high and there are too many gray areas for something not to happen.

That is, unless of course, the leak was done with the wink and nod blessing of the studio, which is somewhat common practice these days.

Still, I would give a broad "Post at your own risk" warning with this. Shaky legal ground will not stop a campaign of harassment. If the studios are riled and truly want to hold you accountable, they can take you to court and winning is not necessary.

If there is one thing we've learned about the studios and the record labels it is that they are aggressive about protecting their works and often don't care if the law fully supports their arguments.

This might be a strange case where the law is secondary to what the studios want to do.

That is just my non-lawyer opinion and I invite others to state their views, but I've seen too many people be harassed on dubious legal grounds by big copyright to feel comfortable about this kind of thing.

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com

Thanks, that was a great post and gave me a lot to think about.

Does it make any difference that the studio/network are in the US and I'm in the UK?

Great comment Jonathan! I like how you roll out the different perspectives.

@DarkUFO: From a journalistic point of view I would say that you need a 2nd source which proves that the script is the original one. Some kind of authorization would help.

It might make a difference, but not for the better. Fair dealing, the UK equivalent to fair use, is notoriously more narrow than its U.S. counterpart. Since you would be operating under UK law, that could hurt you from a copyright standpoint as there was already a fair use debate.

Defamation law also changes for the worst as UK law is biased against you. If you were in the US, they would have to prove the statements are false, there you have to prove they are true. Not good news considering I don't think you can do that in your circumstance.

Tortuous interference and other points should remain largely the same but UK business law is REALLY outside of my scope.

But yes, it does make a difference, just not a good one. Since the studios would have no trouble going after you from across the Atlantic, I don't think distance protects you here.

If anything, it makes things worse.

Hope this helps!

@Markus

Good point. I forgot to mention the pure ethics of the situation. It's what I get for being wrapped up in the legal side...

But yes, you are right on that, it would help guard against a defamation suit as well.

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com

Another point is the writing style. If you report about the script like it is fictional then you should also be on the safe side.

• Let's post some speculation about the new movie...
• Imagine the following plot could happen...
• There might be a script in the wild which could show the following scenario...

From the journalistic point of view this is not the finest solution but writing in fiction style should be helpful in the legal battle.

Markus,

That approach is interesting but there are two issues. First, it defeats the purpose of publishing a spoiler. I can speculate just as effectively without a copy of the script in hand. It takes away all that would be special to a reader.

Second, while it might help with the defamation issue some, if the "speculation" were obviously from the script, the other issues could still be a problem.

Sure, you'd be less likely to endure a problem, especially if you stepped away from it and were more vague, but there are no guarrantees.

I'm just not sure if, for me, the lost interest due to it being fictional would warrant the increased safety. However, that's a personal decision.

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com