By Alexandra Berzon And David Enrich
A lawyer representing Sony Pictures Entertainment Monday asked
Twitter Inc. to suspend the account of a user who posted more than
50 internal company documents released by hackers as part of a
massive cyberattack on the studio.
The letter to Twitter, sent by well-known attorney David Boies,
is similar to ones Mr. Boies sent to news organizations last week
on behalf of Sony Corp.'s entertainment unit.
Many news organizations have used emails to and from Sony
Pictures motion picture head Amy Pascal, Sony Entertainment CEO
Michael Lynton and other senior executives, in addition to
contracts and other documents, as fodder for stories.
In those cases, Mr. Boies said the outlets weren't allowed to
use "stolen" information and threatened that they may be
responsible for damages incurred by Sony that were related to the
reports. Media attorneys have said that the law allows news outlets
to report on information in the public interest regardless of its
origins.
A Sony representative had no comment. Mr. Boies didn't
immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Monday, Twitter said it had received the letter from Mr.
Boies and shared it with one of its users, but had no further
comment. The social-media company occasionally receives such
letters from governmental bodies and generally shares them with the
targeted user.
The Twitter user targeted by the letter is musician Val
Broeksmit, whose Twitter handle is @bikinirobotarmy, also the name
of his band. Mr. Broeksmit since Dec. 13 has posted on Twitter more
than 50 images that came from the hacks, including a Sony
movie-release schedule and emails from Brad Pitt, producer Scott
Rudin and Ms. Pascal.
On Dec. 19, Twitter told Mr. Broeksmit by email that his account
had been suspended due to a complaint over a single tweet, which
appeared to be focused on an Oliver Stone film about Edward
Snowden, according to a copy of the email reviewed by The Wall
Street Journal.
That tweet was later deleted and Mr. Broeksmit's account was
reactivated, according to a follow-up email sent the same day.
On Monday, Twitter forwarded Mr. Broeksmit the letter it had
received from Mr. Boies stating that Sony would hold Twitter
accountable for damages if it didn't suspend Mr. Broeksmit's
account and destroy all of the internal Sony documents.
Twitter didn't tell Mr. Broeksmit to take the tweets down, but
said it couldn't provide him with legal advice and suggested he get
a lawyer, according to Mr. Broeksmit.
Mr. Broeksmit said he was surprised by the letter. "It's crazy,"
he said. "If this can happen to me, it can happen to anybody."
Yoree Koh and Ben Fritz contributed to this article.
Write to Alexandra Berzon at alexandra.berzon@wsj.com and David
Enrich at david.enrich@wsj.com
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