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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.
....It was realeased on the warez scene back in August, yet the movie isn't due out until November. And it was the real DVD, not some badly-made bootleg (though slighty downsampled to fit on a DVD-R, you can barely tell the difference).
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
Assumably the punishment will be base on the value of the "thing" stolen. How is that caclulated? Or will the guy go up on a more generic charge like breech of contract?
The DMV cops? How do they figure in?
Maybe the real cops and the FBI didn't think there was a case to pursue?
i don't know whether that was exactly the right call, but i bet the guy doesn't serve much jail time. his name in hollywood is mud, so he'll probably go back to debuque or wherever and start a new career making indie films about black lesbians rediscovering the joy of lyme disease.
oh and another thing. i predict matt groening to be the next target of geek betrayal and disgust. we've all known and loved him for the simpsons, but when the movies come out, they are gonna suck, and no one will remember him fondly anymore, and they will invent their own simpsons mythos that makes more sense.
then george lucas and matt groening will have a beard staring contest, and the loser will have to shave it off on PBS during fund drive week. at least that's what i heard.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Of course, at $300 million, Attack of the Clones didn't pull in nearly as much money as The Phantom Menace, nor did it do as well as Spider-Man, itself a $450 million film, but consider this: TPM was more for children (not surprising in the long run, given that the lead character was a child), so kids went to go see it en masse, dragging parents along, for multiple showings. Box office gold. AOTC, what with its violence (Boba Fett picking up Jango's helmet and with the head falling out probably didn't make parents happy), lack of Jar-Jar (kids these days don't know who Yoda is), and love story, didn't make the kids want to go see it over and over again. Spider-Man, however, did. No surprise there. Plus don't forget that Spider-Man had the bizarre "luck" of being a movie about a superhero saving NYC in a post-9/11 world. The USA decided they liked that idea quite a bit (especially with the New Yorkers bonding on the bridge against the bad guy towards the end).
I personally think the reason AOTC didn't do as well as TPM was because it was the middle film. I walked out of there thinking "great - now I want to see the ending" (episode 3). My test of this theory will be how The Two Towers fares...
Schnapple
I know a few people in the film industry and Production Assistants ( especially 3rds ) are usually people who have film degrees but have failed in every aspect of the business. Maybe the guy was in his 30s, knew he wasn't going any where and decided to deploy his own 'golden parachute'
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Damn, I thought I was alone. Don't let it get you down, though. In the world technology and computing, /. is a joke. No one takes this site seriously anymore, and it's dismissed as a haven of wanna-be hackers and software pirates. What's funny is, watch how the posts die down during weekends. My bet is it's because /. is generally "tolerable-browsing" in the workplace, so you'll notice higher numbers during weekdays.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Normally honest people will steal when they think there is 0 chance of being caught.
People will steal the *stupidest* things just because they can.
People develop a sense of entitlement to what they are stealing.
The risk is almost never worth the item stolen.
I've seen people risk graduate degrees to steal reams of paper, risk a 200k job to steal 10k worth of stuff ...
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
So I guess that means that the Sith are going to kick the Jedis' ass simply due to sheer numbers...except that they limit their own numbers to two in the entire galaxy (a master an an apprentice. Guess that means they go out of their way to kill anyone else who has aspirations of becoming a Sith), unless the Jedi are simply deluding themselves about the Sith to make themselves feel better...
Looks to me like all these Force wielders are idiots. No wonder they've all but disappeared by the time of EP6...
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Take a copy of a movie and show it to other people while not making any money, go to jail.
... there examples a pleanty. But the moral of the story is, in America's justice system it's only really wrong if you don't make a fortune.
Make millions as a CEO through deception and fraud destroying the financial lives of thousands and contributing to the collapse of the economy as a whole... you can go free.
Sell a relitivly harmless plant to someone to help them releave stress, go to jail.
Make billions by putting out drugs at prices that bankrupt people less they die... you can go free.
The Internet is generally stupid