From a press release put out by 20th Century Fox:
We’ve just been made aware that Roger Friedman, a freelance columnist who writes Fox 411 on Foxnews.com – an entirely separate company from 20th Century Fox – watched on the internet and reviewed a stolen and unfinished version of X-Men Orgins: Wolverine. This behavior is reprehensible and we condemn this act categorically – whether the review is good or bad.
To summarize: somebody put a pirated, incomplete version of Fox’s Wolverine movie on the Internet last week. This is of course illegal and could do serious damage to the movie’s box office if enough people see it and decide to skip the theatrical release next month. Then a critic for Fox News then downloaded the leaked movie and posted a generally positive review of it. After which Fox attacked, well, itself for violating copyright and fired Friedman. (Claiming News Corp.’s film and news divisions are “entirely separate” is kind of funny when whole world knows that Rupert Murdoch is running the show. By this argument the produce and dairy sections of your supermarket are also “entirely separate” entities.) What this shows is that even in the relatively controlled confines of a major communications corporation, strict control of information and copyrighted material cannot be maintained. Not only does stuff leak out, but then it leaks back in, then out again. It’s been clear for some time that the whole corporate-legal superstructure built on copyright is cracking, and as it cracks you’re going to see more bizarre, Escher-like events like this one.
