Fox News Columnist Pays Big Price for Reviewing a Pirated Movie

[rdmtimp]

Source: New York Times

Roger Friedman, an entertainment columnist for FoxNews.com, discovered over the weekend just what Rupert Murdoch means by “zero tolerance” when it comes to movie piracy.

On Friday, the film studio 20th Century Fox — owned by the News Corporation, the media conglomerate ruled by Mr. Murdoch — became angry after reading Mr. Friedman’s latest column. (Movie bloggers had started opining about it late Thursday, alerting the studio.) The subject was “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” a big-budget movie that was leaked in unfinished form on the Web last week.

Mr. Friedman posted a minireview, adding, “It took really less than seconds to start playing it all right onto my computer.”

The film studio, which enlisted the F.B.I. last week to hunt the pirate, put out a statement calling Mr. Friedman’s column “reprehensible,” among other things. Then the News Corporation weighed in with its own statement, saying it asked had Fox News to remove the column from its Web site. (It did.)



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/business/media/06fox.html

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Oops....

[Tikki]

1. But Murdock, himself, is preditory.......

There must be a very fine line between what he wants his reporters to get and what they can't touch....
I'd hate to work for the fool...

Tikki

[Sebastian Doyle]

2. And if this had been a leaked Disney film (or some other company) Rupe would have loved the reviews

But when it takes money out of his pocket, well that's different. :eyes:

[Blue_Tires]

3. a friend of mine had that and i tried watching it yesterday

it was craptastic, even apart from the crude editing, bad sound, and unfinished CGI... I began to realize that the actual movie could be drastically different from the unfinished proof on the net and I walked out halfway through (not that anything the movie showed was good enough to keep me watching...)

[MADem]

4. Wow, they FIRED the guy--they probably wouldn't have known about the piracy if it weren't for him.

Over the weekend, the Web site Deadline Hollywood Daily reported that Mr. Friedman had been dismissed. Sure enough, on Sunday came a revised statement from the News Corporation. “When we advised Fox News of the facts,” the statement said, “they promptly terminated Mr. Friedman.”

Interestingly, Fox News has been relatively silent. In a statement released on Sunday, the network said, “This is an internal matter that we aren’t prepared to discuss at this time.”

Efforts to reach Mr. Friedman were unsuccessful.

[Politicalboi]

5. They fired his ass

Time to move on to the War aginst Mr. Rogers. LOL Your not so special after all are you.

http://www.jabberwonk.com/flinker.cfm?cliid=11sn0z

[proust78]

6. Fine him and Fox News $150,000 for this violation!

Quick, impound their computers and have a little look-see! Fox News is obviously conspiring to commit copyright infringement.