Sony's Legal Hounds Threaten To Sue Twitter For Tweets Containing Leaked Emails

Sony is having a tough time figuring out its true enemy (psst, Sony, it's North Korea!). Following a massive cyberattack that resulted in the theft of data and ultimately led to the company cancelling the Christmas Day debut of "The Interview," a far-fetched comedy involving an assassination attempt North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Sony has been threatening different people and entities not involved in the attack with lawsuits.

Just last week, Sony's legal team reportedly sent a letter to at least three major news agencies demanding that they stop publishing information contained in stolen documents from the cyberattack. Now Sony is targeting Twitter with threats of legal action against the microblogging site if it doesn't bow to demands to ban accounts that are sharing leaked emails.

Sony's legal beagles are keeping an eye on social media sites for leaked emails. Image Source: Flickr (tash lampard)

Emails obtained by Motherboard reveal that David Boies, a lawyer for Sony, sent a letter to Twitter's general counsel saying if "stolen information continues to be disseminated by Twitter in any manner," Sony will "hold Twitter responsible for any damage or loss arising from such use or dissemination by Twitter."

The letter also advised Twitter to share Sony's sentiment with Val Broeksmit, a musician who's been posting screen captures of hacked Sony emails on Twitter. Twitter did in fact the share the email and letter with Broeksmit, who in turn forwarded the correspondence to Motherboard.

Twitter doesn't need any arm-twisting to crack down on users who post other people's private information -- that's already against the site's rules. However, users are free to post links to that kind of information.