News Corp. studio Twentieth Century Fox has subpoenaed Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) video site YouTube to request that it hand over data identifying a user who has uploaded episodes of the television shows 24 and The Simpsons, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Fox filed a subpoena in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on January 18. Fox alleged that a YouTube subscriber, ECOtotal uploaded 12 episodes of '˜The Simpsons' to the popular video site without permission. The user is also said to have uploaded a four-episode season premiere of '˜24' before it was shown on broadcast television, the Journal said.

Fox said it officially notified YouTube about the episodes and requested that they be removed immediately or that access to the content was disabled, the Journal said.

The same episodes were uploaded under the username of Jorge Romero on the video site LiveDigital, which has also been subpoenaed, the report stated. A spokesman for LiveDigital told the Journal that the material was taken down right away.

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