And the inevitable Black List cease-and-desist…

I don’t know what wingnut set up a Mediafire library with all of the Black List scripts on it, considering Fox’s $15 million lawsuit against the other Mediafire script library, but somebody did, and can you guess what happened?

Fox had it shut down.

But not before The Hollywood Reporter could post an article about Fox’s mobilization against script trading sites and include the link to the mediafire site in the article! In fact, the article may have been what tipped off Fox in the first place, at least The Hollywood Reporter thinks so as the post now ends with “UPDATE: The MediaFire page with the Black List scripts has been disabled, probably as a result of this story.”

Powerful use of the “probably,” guys!

They also say:

We’ve learned that lawyers for Twentieth Century Fox are zeroing in on websites such as MediaFire, which is hosting PDF copies of all 76 of the copyrighted Black List screenplays in their entirety, including many owned by Fox. Lawyers for the studio are preparing to send MediaFire a cease-and-desist letter as part of a larger campaign to clamp down on script-trading online. The letters demand that the site owners immediately take down the scripts or face legal action from the studio.

Interesting times. I still say, well, I know, that studying produced scripts and writing Story Maps of them is a necessary learning tool for a screenwriter.

Let’s hope we get to a day where at least a few sites offer some produced scripts for free download.

Until then, you may just have to contend with the U.S. Homeland Security office, because they are currently enforcing copyright infringement!

Yikes.

-Dan