File hosting service Hotfile has sued Warner Bros. for abusing its anti-piracy tool. TorrentFreak reports that Warner Bros. apparently removed “hundreds of titles” from Hotfile, even if they did not hold the copyrights to them. The deleted files include game demos and open source software, the file host said.

Hotfile, which was sued for copyright infringement by five members of the MPAA earlier this year, alleges that Warner Bros. has violated the DMCA and lists intentional interference with a contractual or business relationship and negligence as second and third counts in its suit.

“The single file deleted by Warner that had been most frequently downloaded by Hotfile users—five times more frequently than any other file—was a freeware software title wrongfully deleted by Warner,” the suit states. “The software publisher that uploaded the file used Hotfile.com as a means for distribution of its open source software. Warner was not authorized by the software publisher to delete the file.”

Hotfile speculates that the takedowns had an economic motive as an agreement between Warner Bros. and Hotfile allows the movie studio to replace content that was taken down with a link to Warner Bros. content that can be purchased. The more content Warner removed, the more links it was able to place. Warner Bros has not commented on the new suit.

SOURCE via Torrentfreak