Film director Quentin Tarantino announced on Monday that he will take legal action against the website Gawker for copyright infringement and sharing links where users could download the script for what would have been his next movie, "The Hateful Eight."
The "Pulp Fiction" and "Kill Bill" director has demanded $2 million as compensation for leaking ohis original script.
According to Reuters, on Tuesday Gawker editor John Cook denied the website committed copyright infringement when it posted a link to Tarantino's uploaded script on Monday, Jan. 20.
Cook denied that the website was responsible for leaking the 146-page script for what would have been the new film, a western by the famous director, and emphasized that they had only published a link to an external website where the document could be downloaded.
After hearing that the script for his next movie had been uploaded, Tarantino announced that he would cancel the "The Hateful Eight," and said that he would take legal action against Gawker, reported the AFP.
"This action is made necessary by the flagrant violation of copyright by Gawker Media by promoting and spreading unauthorized copies of an unpublished, leaked script," said the director's lawyers.
Online storage website AnonFiles.com, a website where users can upload files anonymously, was also named in Tarantino's accusation.
Gawker replied on its website that it did not violate copyright laws in any way and that the website was not responsible for leaking the script.
"Someone unknown to Gawker put it on a web site called AnonFiles, and someone unknown to Gawker put it on a different web site called Scribd. Last Thursday, Gawker received a tip from a reader informing us that the script was on the AnonFiles site, after which Gawker published a story reporting that the script had surfaced online," Gawker wrote.