News Corporation said on Tuesday that fired entertainment columnist Roger Friedman was sacked for writing a review of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" from a stolen copy of the film that had been posted on the Internet.

Fox News last week published at its website a column Friedman wrote about downloading and watching the 20th Century Fox Films action movie based on X-Men comic book heroes.

The movie is due for release in theatres worldwide at the end of April.

"We, along with 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, have been a consistent leader in the fight against piracy and have zero tolerance for any action that encourages and promotes piracy," News Corporation said in an email response to an AFP inquiry.

"When we advised Fox News of the facts they took immediate action, removed the post, and promptly terminated Mr Friedman."

Fox News and 20th Century Fox film studio are both subsidiaries of News Corp., which is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

An "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" that the studio said was stolen last week bounded onto the Internet, where it was freely downloaded from file sharing websites.

"It was without many effects, had missing and unedited scenes and temporary sound and music," Fox studio spokesperson Chris Petrikin said of the version of the film put online.

"We immediately contacted the appropriate legal authorities and had it removed."

Fox forensically marks digital films to better track them and, in this case, figure out who made it available online and those that downloaded copies.

The "X-Men" film, based on the eponymous comic book characters, was evidently spread with BitTorrent file sharing technology that lets people share large data files virally between computers in a fashion called peer-to-peer.

AFP

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