John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

I'm ’24′ Fan Jorge Romero, and Today Is the Longest Day of My Life.

Counterterrorism officer extraordinaire Jack Bauer would have solved this one with a bullet to the temple, so Jorge Romero should consider himself lucky. On Friday, the FBI filed a criminal complaint against Romero for allegedly uploading the first four episodes of the sixth season of “24” to LiveDigital.com, well in advance of their prime-time debut. According to the complaint, Romero downloaded shows from a peer-to-peer service, uploaded them to LiveDigital, and then posted them to Digg.com, apparently in an ill-starred effort to boost his profile on the social-news service. Of course, the only thing he succeeded in doing was to make himself easier to track down, which the FBI did in short order.

Now he faces a three-year prison sentence and the prospect of Hollywood waving his piked head about as a warning to all would-be copyright violators. “The FBI makes this a different ball game,” said Jay Cooper, an attorney at Greenberg Traurig who specializes in intellectual-property issues. “The public doesn’t seem to get that it’s wrong, and maybe a message like this has to get out there so people realize there are criminal penalties.”


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While it’s tempting to see the Huffington Post’s Pulitzer as a “big win for new media,” or something like that, the real story is that these organizations — the Huffington Post, the New York Times, the Washington Post — are becoming more like each other. Old media and new media are increasingly antiquated terms.

— Journalism professor Jay Rosen to HuffPo media writer Michael Calderone (via GigaOM)