Warner Bros. Studios Accidentally Flags its own Website, Along With Other Legitimate Websites, as Illegal

By Angel Soleil / 1473276160
(Photo : Getty Images/Daniel Boczarski ) Cosplayer poses as Batman during Wizard World Comic Con Chicago 2016 - Day 3 at Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois.

Warner Bros. Studios regularly reports pirated content, as part of the company's advocacy against online piracy. However, the company has somehow mistakenly flagged its own website as illegal. News circled that the company wanted its website to be taken down by Google due to copyright violations.

Vobile, a company that files thousands of takedown requests every month, submitted the request on behalf of Warner Bros. Studios. The takedown request included the removal of 2008's "The Dark Knight" official web page. According to the request, the company wanted to remove links to film streaming websites run by Sky and Amazon, as well as online film reference websites such as IMDB. These legitimate websites were flagged with copyright infringement as well.

Torrent Freak was the first to notice that Vobile had made a mistake. Ernesto Van der Sar from Torrent Freak stated that "Warner is inadvertently trying to make it harder for the public to find links to legitimate content, which runs counter to its intentions."

But Google, having experienced mistakes like these, decided not to remove links to Amazon, Sky, and IMDB. But they did subject the Warner Bros. Studios URL to review.

Vobile is one of many piracy monitoring firms that work on behalf of major film studios, reporting illegally uploaded copies of movies and other television shows. A Google transparency report shows that the company has submitted more than 13 million takedown requests.

Since companies like Vobile use automated systems to detect and report illegal and copyright infringing websites, oversights can happen. For instance, Entura International made a mistake by reporting, on behalf of Lionsgate, that a copy of "London Has Fallen" was found on the Microsoft download store.

Warner Bros. Studios is yet to issue a statement regarding the incident.