Out of all the studios that WorstPreviews deals with, no other tries to bully us and other sites around like Paramount. While our direct contacts are some of the nicest people, the studio's legal department, which looks to be outsourced to a third party, consists of a bunch of trigger-happy lawyers, who do their job by shooting first and asking questions later.
As a result, we have been shut down due to some "Transformers" pictures, TheMovieBlog was shut down for the same reason, and what happened to IESB was the worst thing of all. Let me explain.
Pictures and videos leak onto the internet all the time, and every single studio simply contacts the site owner asking them to take down certain material with promises of official content to replace whatever was removed. Paramount's legal department skips that step and goes directly to the web hosting companies to make sure that the site is shut down. The reason given by Paramount: their legal department tries to take care of the problem quickly.
When our sites are shut down, we immediately begin losing money, since our sponsors' ads do not show up anymore. Our readers begin looking for content elsewhere, thinking that the site they like to visit is having technical issues. To get the site back up, is a headache on its own, which could take a day or two.
But Paramount just went a step further, making me wonder whether they truly appreciates what the online community does for them. Which is provide endless FREE marketing for their films.
Since "Iron Man" grossed over $100 million this weekend, it is obvious that many of you went out to see it. But did you notice that at the end of the movie, Tony Star (Robert Downey Jr.) is holding up The Chronicle newspaper with the headline reading "Who is The Iron Man?," plus a shot of a paparazzi-type shot of the superhero.
That shot was actually taken by IESB, which caused their site to be shut down by Paramount. The picture turned out to be completely legal, due to the fact that the movie was being filmed on a public highway, but the legal department was still able to shut them down for three days.
Now Paramount is using that very same picture in their movie, without any credit to IESB or even their permission. It is simply revenge.
Director Jon Favreau claims to follow all the blogs and online press for his movies, but he still let this happen in his great movie. I just hope that this man of the people was not responsible for this, otherwise he might have a mutiny on his hands.
If Paramount or Favreau want to set the record straight, contact us and we'll do a follow-up/update.
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