Nickelodeon probes claims of massive data leak as SpongeBob fans rejoice

Nickelodeon says it is probing claims that "decades old" material was stolen from it and leaked online. This follows reports on social media that someone had dumped 500GB of snatched animation files. Hilarity, and many SpongeBob SquarePants memes, ensued. "We are aware of social media posts that alleged production-related …

[Pascal Monett]

"Nickelodeon has deep pockets"

Well it's going to need them. International lawsuits are a whole 'nother level of expense.

The stuff is out there now. Let the game of whack-a-mole commence.

[ChoHag]

Re: "Nickelodeon has deep pockets"

Nickelodeon get to decide whether this incident is remembered with sponge-bob memes or shark memes. Either way there will be pirates.

Get a bucket of clam chowder and a pile of krabby patties and settle in for some hardcore nautical entertainment.

[Howard Sway]

Are you ready, kids?

Who lives in a file server written in C?

SpongeBob SquarePants!

It's leaky and porous, you can use FTP

SpongeBob SquarePants!

If nautical nonsense be something you wish

SpongeBob SquarePants!

Then email the admins, they'll flop for a phish!

SpongeBob SquarePants!

[Little Mouse]

Now that it's out there anyway, Nickelodeon could do worse than to make the same content officially (& freely!) available - Maybe dress it up a bit and add some context, DVD-extras style.

As the article said, there are people out there who would be genuinely excited about this, and it would provide an interesting behind-the-scenes view of what actually went on back in the day.

[veti]

That would be nice. But what will give them pause is the incentives it would create. Imagine a hundred thousand Spongebob fans all motivated to produce the next such hack, to bring about another freebie dump.

[stiine]

Why would it need to be free? I didn't read about that requirement.

They should put all of the video and stills on youtube, vimeo, and every other ad-supported or paid video platform. Hell, they should upload the audio snippets, too. Also put the audio on Spotify, Apple Music, etc, with ads. Hell, open a patreon account dedicated to the cataloging and disemination. Surely there are 50k people who'd pay $5 to have this happen. If its out there, its out there and they're never going to remove it all succesfully. They should embrace it and charge for it. I think the same should go for every production company, movie studio and tv network. if you've got pre-production art, stills, outtakes, even B-roll video, I can assure you that if you put it on youtube, with ads, people will watch it. If you have your in-house historian overdub the video-only peices, hardcore fans will watch even more ads. If you put it online, you could reach 4,000,000,000 paying customers, and with that audience, you'd have to be an ignoramus not to.

[Cav]

"Why would it need to be free? I didn't read about that requirement."

Did you read the point that was being responded to? "content officially (& freely!) available"

[Spazturtle]

Freely =/= free

For example: Titanic is a freely available film as anyone can go out and buy a copy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nick, get your head out of your butt

The data is leaked, it is out there forever. Chasing everyone down that has a copy or talks about its stupid, costly, and does nothing to get it back. Now if someone is selling the content, sure take them to court, slam dunk 'em.