Monday, November 10, 2014

Why Non-Disclosure Agreements Aren't for Hydra Agents


Unless you've been living under a rock (or a metaphorical rock), you've probably seen the Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer. I've written about it before, in case you're curious.

That being said, releasing trailers has become almost as much of a business as releasing movies. Today's moviegoing population is always eager for the next big event, and Marvel knows perfectly well that the sequel to the third-highest grossing movie of all time is going to garner some serious attention. They made plans to release the trailer at a very specific time, realizing that they could also get a serious viewership boost for their TV show, Agents of SHIELD if they premiered the trailer during the show.

Alas, Murphy's Law states that such a boost was not to happen. The very next day after announcing that the trailer would debut during the October 28th episode, the trailer was leaked online. Within mere minutes, the trailer had been spread across the internet. It was being re-uploaded faster than Marvel could get it taken down.

How did Marvel respond? Twitter. A simple tweet reading, "Dammit, Hydra." which has since been either retweeted or favorited over 67000 times. Everyone knew what it was about, and it wasn't long after that Marvel decided that if we were going to watch the trailer, we should at least watch it in HD, so they uploaded the official trailer to YouTube, where it has since been viewed over 57 million times.

All's well that ends well, right?

Well, not exactly. Marvel's not going to let that Hydra agent slip away unpunished. Whoever it was had access to a trailer that wasn't supposed to go public for another 6 days, and they uploaded it to a Google Drive account to share with the world. Obviously, this hurt the potential viewership of Agents of SHIELD, but it also raises the question as to what else this person could leak. Obviously, Marvel doesn't want to take that chance, which is why this past Tuesday, they filed a subpoena for Google to deliver the identity of the uploader of the trailer, so that Marvel can cut off the head of this Hydra agent.

However, like the motto goes, "Cut off one head, two more take its place." Despite all of the logic and reason (not to mention the DMCA) supporting Marvel's right to do this, the pessimist in me can already see the internet trolls emerging from their caverns and bridges to oppose Marvel. "Freedom of speech!" "You gave it to him, why shouldn't he do what he wants with it?" I've already seen one idiot try to turn this into "Marvel doesn't appreciate their fans, they just want to sue you guys." With all the paranoia in today's digital world about whether or not private companies should be able to access our personal information without our consent, it can be easy to forget that if you're stupid enough to give your personal information to a company like Google, and then break the law using that very account, you've pretty much given up your rights to privacy.

Personally, I'm hoping this can serve as a demonstration to the rest of Hydra. If you violate the DMCA, or an NDA, they will hunt you down, they will find you, and they will kill sue you.

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