Marvel Seeks DMCA Subpoenas For Names Of Ant-Man Dialogue Leakers

Marvel has asked a US federal court to issue Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) subpoenas to Google and Reddit in a bid to identify individuals who leaked dialogue from the upcoming film Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Ars Technica was first to report.

Marvel alleges that before the film's release in February, dialogue was leaked via a Google Docs file posted on Reddit. Although both links have since been deleted, Marvel is hoping to identify the people responsible, including Reddit moderators whom it suspects may have been involved. The subpoena requests filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California are seeking users' identifying information, including names, numbers, addresses and IP addresses. In addition, Marvel is requesting a report of revisions made to the Google Docs file between December 1, 2022 and February 15, 2023, including all related IP addresses associated with such revisions.

The subpoena requests follow a separate case in the same court, in which Reddit is fighting demands from several film studios to identify users who posted comments in piracy-related threads. In this instance, Marvel is specifically targeting the Reddit account MSSmods, a shared account for the moderators of the Marvel Studios Spoilers subreddit. Users in the thread discussed the leaked dialogue, with some calling it one of the biggest movie leaks ever or the biggest leak in the subreddit's history.

A Reddit spokesperson told Ars Technica that it is "committed to protecting our users' privacy" and has "rigorous processes in place to assess legal requests and objects when appropriate.” Google has yet to comment.

A TorrentFreak article notes that "no infringing content was ever posted to the Reddit thread... The allegedly infringing content was hosted on Google, [and] the thread simply provided a link."