Multinational conglomerate company Sony has just threatened to sue Twitter if the social network fails to ban the accounts that are repeatedly posting internal emails that have been leaked by its hackers.

David Boies, the company’s lawyer, also asked the micro-blogging site to share the warning letter with user Val Broeksmit, who tweets screenshots of those emails on his @BikiniRobotArmy account.

In turn, Broeksmit sent the letter to Motherboard, which notes that it’s not a formal DMCA request, but purely a legal threat. Part of the missive reads:

SPE (Sony Pictures Entertainment) does not consent to Twitter’s or any Twitter account holder’s possession, review, copying, dissemination, publication, uploading, downloading, or making any use of the Stolen Information, and to request your cooperation in suspending the Account Holder’s Twitter account and the account of any other user seeking to disseminate the Stolen Information via Twitter.

It also states that Sony will “hold Twitter responsible for any damage or loss arising from such use or dissemination by Twitter.”

Of course, it could be argued that if it weren’t for the lawsuit we probably wouldn’t have them compiled right here. If you recall, Sony’s hackers (also known as the Guardians of Peace), uploaded the data they stole and distributed the links to a number of media outlets.

These links could be accessed by the public, so anyone could download their contents. That led to the illicit release of some upcoming movies, execs’ private correspondence, and sad to say, even hapless employees’ social security numbers.

Sony is desperately trying to do some damage control, as it’s also recently fired off similar legal threats to news outlets posting about the leaks, including The New York Times.

As for Twitter, a spokesperson told Motherboard that while it doesn’t allow users to post other people’s private info themselves, linking to leaked data isn’t exactly prohibited.

source: engadget