The BBC have gone to court in a bid to track down the source of a major leak earlier this year and is pursuing tech giant Microsoft for information.
Ahead of Jodie Whittaker’s first season as the Doctor, footage from her debut episode leaked online and the BBC are seeking to subpoena Mircosoft to identify the culprit.
In recently discovered papers from a Washington court published by TorrentFreak (via The Hollywood Reporter), the footage was stored and subsequently shared on file-hosting service OneDrive, which is operated by Microsoft. The papers state that the petitioner, referred to as “BBC Worldwide Limited t/a BBC Studios (Distribution),” requests the court to subpoena Microsoft with regards to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
What’s interesting is that the request seeks to “identify an alleged infringer or infringers” of material not limited to episode 1 of Doctor Who season 11, which suggests more leaked footage could be out there.
Last month, the BBC took the matter to California federal court to subpoena mobile community platform Tapatalk to identify the individual responsible for the leak.
The leak raised a few eyebrows given the extremely secretive manner the new series has been operating under the guidance of new showrunner Chris Chibnall. Leaks are nothing new to the show but the crackdown and then the reaction to this latest leak have more in common with the way that Chibnall ran Broadchurch.
Speaking about the new air of secrecy around the show at SDCC this year, Chibnall said:
“I think there’s a lot of new things this year. There’s new worlds, there’s new characters, there’s lots of new guest characters. New dialogue, new camera angles…It’s really so that we can get it to you guys and everyone else in the world at the same time all polished. … I really love television when it’s a communal experience … I want you guys to all be talking about it at the same time, and we have things you’re not going to want to be spoiled for.”
Doctor Who will return this autumn on BBC One.