16 December 2009

WOLVERINE Bootlegger Gets Busted, But...?

Just yesterday, I was skimming through a review of an allegedly leaked copy of the Transformers 3 script over at Comic Book Movie , which of course got me thinking less about the future Michael Bay project and more about last spring's big leak of Fox Studio's X-MEN ORIGINS: Wolverine. Not the script, mind you, but a high-quality, full-length version of the actual film, available as so many links on several bit torrent sites across the web, with over 75,000 hits after just two days.
I'd been wondering what follow-up there'd been on that, if any, but maybe mutant mid-reading powers had kicked-in without my knowing it. This morning, Entertainment Weekly reported that the FBI arrested the guy responsible for the illegal Wolverine upload in the Bronx last Friday. Gilberto Sanchez has been charged with violation of copyright law and faces three years in jail and will owe 20th Century Fox at least $250,000 in earnings damages.
Whoa! This isn't the whole story though; it's not the most interesting -- or even most relevant - part of it. I'd like to know who supplied the torrent offender with the movie in the first place? The real blame lies there, and considering how closely guarded rough cuts of any potential Summer blockbuster are, it's hard not to believe it wasn't an inside job. If Sanchez has any ties to the studio, they've not been revealed, and no mention of other investigations has been made.
Like Glenn Beck and Fox News demonstrate daily, getting any real news out is next to impossible compared to leaking a high-security superhero bootleg. Fox shouldn't persecute Sanchez; they should hire him.

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