Intellectual Property Law

Fox Claims to Fire Columnist Amid 'X-Men' Piracy Imbroglio

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

The firing of a Foxnews.com movie critic over his glowing review of the upcoming Wolverine underscores that Fox is all about fairness and balance, except when it comes to films pirated from its sister movie studio.

Fox News, owned by News Corp., announced Sunday it had "terminated" its popular freelance writer Roger Friedman because he wrote a review of a pirated copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which began making the rounds on the internet late last week. The firing, which is now in dispute, came days after News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch called Yahoo and Google copyright thieves.

The X-Men review -- which was embarrassingly gushing -- has also been removed from the site. (A partial copy of the review is linked here.)

Fox News, which goes by the slogan, "Fair and Balanced," is the sister organization of 20th Century Fox, the maker of the multimillion-dollar X-Men flick set to debut May 1. Neither the movie making arm of Fox nor its parent, News Corp., thought it was appropriate to review a pirated film.

The corporation said Friedman glorified and promoted piracy by reviewing a pirated movie.

"Roger Friedman's views in no way reflect the views of News Corporation. We, along with 20th Century Film Corporation, have been a consistent leader in the fight against piracy and have a zero tolerance for any action that encourages and promotes piracy," News Corp. said in a statement. "When we advised Fox News of the facts, they took immediate action, removed the post, and promptly terminated Mr. Friedman."

Friedman's Fox411 section was on the Foxnews.com site as of Monday, told Daily Variety that he had not been fired. In response, Fox told Daily Variety that "This is an internal matter that we're not prepared to discuss at this time."

News Corp. did not return phone calls or e-mails seeking comment.

The last posting by Friedman, "Guiding Light Finally Killed by Procter & Gamble,' was dated April 3.

Photo: New England Seccession

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Full post as published by Threat Level on April 06, 2009 (boomark / email).