Leak Star Wars, Go To Jail

Shea O'Brien Foley, a former production assistant at LucasFilm, has been arrested on 13 counts of theft of Star Wars material from LucasFilm worth $450,000. The police investigation was launched after an early Attack of the Clones cut was leaked to and reviewed by Aint It Cool News in March, two months before it hit theaters. Other than the fact that Ain't It Cool News and Harry Knowles aren't being charged with anything, police aren't saying much. Apparently, Jedi mind tricks didn't work on the arresting officers. Update: 10/14 23:51 GMT by T : Michael Singer points to an article on internet.com with more depth.

Comments

Movie pirates

[dattaway]

And the movie industry keeps pushing for copy protection on video cameras just in case of the remote chance someone should shoot the screen and steal a movie. But an insider got the original and leaked it. Imagine that.

Re:Movie pirates

[Anonymous Coward]

umm explain how this is a Troll. He has very valid points.

There isn't any reason for money to be spent (and passed on to the consumer) to ban devices that really aren't causing the problems.

Re:Movie pirates

[susano_otter]

Have you seen his last two movies? He's obsolete already!

Well, it's only lawful

[dwaggie]

Who cares how much hype there is, illegal is illegal. He stole what would be a viable product being engineered (and not finished) by a company. Outside of breaking contract, and just poor ethical judgement, he also just plain stole material before it was released.

I have no beef with after its release. People are going to see a movie for the effect whether they get a pirated version or not, in almost every case I know of (as far as) movie piracy.

We don't need no water ...

Re:Well, it's only lawful

[Anonymous Coward]

With this logic, I should go steal the Mona Lisa, since it's only a few dollars of canvas, oil, and pigments.

Re:Well, it's only lawful

[_Sprocket_]

Stealing, to me, is not depriving someone of a good that they own, but depriving someone of the ideal of safety.

I find this to be an amazing concept. Tell me - how often are you a victom of theft? When the neighborhood thug looks at you a little too long - did he just steal from you? Are you affraid your employer may have to lay you off due to economic pressure... and thus steal your livelihood? Is the increase in political violence direct theft on your person?

Think you could get any form of law enforcement to make a case of these examples of theft?

I don't.

Re:Well, it's only lawful

[Anonymous Coward]

The point I was making is that its wrong to reduce the value of an object to its raw materials. A car is worth a lot more than the price of the metal, and a CD full of unreleased material is worth a lot more than the price of the blank CD.

Cutting away all the fluff, the facts here are that Lucasfilm invested a considerable amount of capital into developing the materials in question, that they were in a postion to profit from their investment, both in the film and the behind the scenes material that could fill years worth of special features and making ofs, and that the individual in question obtained and released the material with neither Lucasfilm's knowledge nor permission. Maybe you can, but I can't twist that around in my mind sufficiently to make it not look like plain, simple theft.

Re:Well, it's only lawful

[mindstrm]

Let's say you are at work. Your company compiles a database of information about something. This is how they make their money.

Then you make a copy of it, and give it away. Have you stolen from the company?

You better believe it.

Re:Well, it's only lawful

[monthos]

Becouse true fans will not watch a crippled internet copy, they want teh real thing, and i do believe there was a significant monetary loss, as much as they claim, i am and noone on slashdot is in a position to know for sure, but face it, he leaked a movie to the internet, and you KNOW people downloaded it, and many of them didnt see it in theaters, its purely speculation to say they would have gone to a theatre had it not been on the internet, but noone is at a position to say one way or another.

As far as theft goes, he did steal, he stole a copy of the movie, and he stole many physical items from the company.

Is there an issue here?

[perrin5]

This hardly seems like news to me. Assuming of course, that this fellow had to sign an NDA to come to work every day (are there any industry people who know about this stuff present?), he did a BAD thing.

If there wasn't, there are still some fairly blatant theft issues here.

Little sympathy

[Drawkcab]

Well, this was very poor judgement on his part, but he knew he was taking a risk when he did it. This would be a very different story if it were some kid who uploaded a divx of the movie on a file sharing network, but this was an insider who was entrusted with that material and chose to violate that trust, so I have little sympathy for him. If copyright infringement is stealing, then this is embezzlement, and thats a far greater ethical lapse because the only reason its possible to embezzle is that you were entrusted not to.

Re:Little sympathy

[Sodium Attack]

If copyright infringement is stealing, then this is embezzlement,

It's worse than that, even. The person is accused not of making a copy of the movie, but of actually stealing physical material. Regardless of the varying views of intellectual property law found here, I think most /.ers still agree that taking physical items without permission is theft.

no one noticed the best part...

[Orgasmatron]

He was arrested by the Computer Forensics and Investigations office of, wait for it, the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Anyone care to tell me why the DMV has an office for computer forensics and investigations?

Re:Jedi Mind Tricks

[lefthand50]

Isn't this actually how many medichlorians you have? A six year old could pull this off...

Re:OH HELL NO.

[DaytonCIM]

LOL!

I mean honestly, I didn't like the last Star Wars movie, so I have to be entitled to download burn this one to divx for compensation, right? It's only fair.

You nailed it, my friend. 99% of the movie, music, software pirates justify their actions with the "I deserve it" excuse.

"I have been a fan of Star Wars since I was 9, so I deserve to 'own' a copy before anyone else."

"I deserve lower prices at the box office, so I'll just download an illegal copy."

"I wasn't going to pay to see it in the theatre anyways, so I can download it because Lucas isn't losing money either way"

It burns me that some in the /. community can jump up and down and scream when Microsoft begins to charge for something they think should be free.

Shout the praises of Linus when he releases something new for free.

And support people that pirate a movie like Star Wars... a movie funded SOLELY by George Lucas.

Review:
It's ok to pirate Microsoft, 'cause they're bad.
It's not ok to pirate Linux, 'cause they're good.
It's ok to pirate Star Wars, 'cause Mr. Lucas has enough money already (forget that he employs nearly 2000 people).

I love /. community logic.

Re:Jedi Mind Tricks

[carlfish]

This misconception annoys me.

Yes, the prequels sucked. Yes, the "midichlorian" thing was annoying because it replaces something that was comfortingly mystical: "I can feel the Force is strong in this one" with trek-like technobabble. "Oooh, his midichlorian count is off the scale!"

However, the idea that sensitivity to the Force ran in your family was pretty apparent throughout the first series. Even in the first Star Wars, you're left with the idea that Luke gets his ability in the Force from his father. It gets clearer towards the end of the trilogy. Think of Yoda's last words - "There is another Skywalker", or Luke talking to Leia in ROTJ: "The Force is strong in my family." All TPM did was take an idea that was already there (Force sensitivity runs in bloodlines) and over-explains it until it becomes dull.

Charles Miller

Unfounded allegations.

[Performer Guy]

This is complete bullshit. There's nothing here that suggests he stole the film, he didn't even have a copy.

The guy has a few copies of starwars production images and some audio effects on CDROM and they accuse him of theft. He's a production assistant, are you telling me this isn't commonplace? They all have this kind of stuff lying around. As for the storyboards, look at the memerobelia that regularly surfaces after years, that would otherwise have been thrown in the trash if some grip hadn't grabbed it. Not only do they have the gall to charge him with theft mind you, but grand theft! The guy's an ex-employee and has some images on a CDROM he didn't use and it's "grand" theft. He didn't deprive Lucasfilm of their use and he didn't use them illegally, they were just lying on his disk.

Lucasfilm you hypocrites, look at your own hard disks and 'souvenir' collections and then examine your conscience, if you have any.

Let this be a lesson to the reader, DON'T work for Lucasfilm, DON'T have anything to do with the assholes.

A fishing expedition fails to catch what they're looking for so they charge the guy for something many of them do.

Umm .. can you say 'FAN'

[RembrandtX]

Lets face it folks, anyone who is a fan of something .. then finds themselves in a position of WORKING for a company that produces what they love .. is going to wind up with stuff.

I worked for games-workshop .. and man .. the stuff people would ask to take home. Big card board cutouts of orks .. dice .. tape measures with 'games-workshop' on them.

I personally have FOUR jackets given to me by the company .. some signed artwork from the studio in the UK, a japanese bayonette , [I helped start Gmaes-Workshop Japan], a few coffee mugs from the studio I worked in, (we were all given mugs) and tonnes of toy soldiers that were not released.

The studio often passed out copies of rules for games that were not out yet .. asking folks to take them home and read them over (i have a bunch of this stuff still to.)

My point being, this kid worked for friggen STAR WARS. If he really was such a goober on this stuff .. of COURSE he brought some stuff home .. Hell .. some or all of it could have even been legimitate.

I work for Black & Decker now .. and every once in a while someone will give me one of the tools they are producing .. if to say 'thanks for working on my project' or to bribe me to get theirs done before someone elses .. it doesnt matter. These are written off by the guys who have 100's of them to give away.

SO lets get back to lucas. Some drafter is working on scenery .. has a few duplicates of storyboards to work off off (photo copies .. or what not) finishes his job .. and the geek who was running the rotoscoping camera over it asked if he was just gonna throw those out.

This guy thinkgs its kinda cute that the geek is drooling over a copy of this story board (that now has epoxy stuck to it) and makes his day by giving it to him.

Imagine, a REAL fan boy .. who gets himself into this situation as much as he can. [Knowing folks in the Video Game industry, at Games Workshop, At Wizards of the Coast .. I can rest assured from PERSONAL experience .. This happens ALL the time .. some geeks would rather take home something 'cool' from their job than go to lunch .. so the spend their lunch hours talking to the guys who don't need this stuff anymore.

Now is this going to be the case every time ? I don't know . but lets step back and look for a second. Its QUITE possible that all (or at least most) of the stuff this guy has .. was legimatly aquired .. or at least aquired the same way im sure 90% of the guys at SkyWalker Ranch have some cool prop from one of the movies at home.

I mean, WHO wouldnt ??

Ian McCullen has the door knocker off of Bilbo's Door at Bags End. Why is it so hard to believe that this guy ... considering his job .. might have either brought this stuff home for work purposes .. or just cause he was a geek ?

Foley effected more than just his own life

[jvenzon]

While some might argue that 13 CDs and paperwork don't add up to much, what is not being mentioned is what Foley took represented over a decade of sound design work on the part of Ben Burtt and his sound crew. What also gets lost in the George Lucas good/evil is that Foley's actions didn't just impact his life, but also those of the editing crew he worked for. Being a feature film editor in Hollywood, the single greatest fear is having a copy of the movie leak out, not because we are afraid of people seeing the movie before we're 'done' with it, but because we know that the producers and studio execs will blame editing department for the leak. While we might agree that the figures that Lucasfilm propose are inflated, that doesn't change the fact that the producers believe that's what the theft cost them. Those same producers are not likely to rehire us for the next project or worse, tell others that you or your editing crew can't be trusted. If you don't believe me, wait until Episode III comes out and see how many people in the editing crew aren't asked to come back because of this. Foley's actions will have ramifications to that editing crew long past whatever time he ends up serving.