The celebrity gossip blog TMZ.com and its owners, AOL and Time Warner, are in hot water after TMZ published the entire manuscript of the macabre OJ Simpson murder tell-all If I Did It yesterday. TMZ posted a link to the bizarre 118-page manuscript (UPDATE: the PDF of the manuscript is 118 pages but the manuscript itself is actually more than 200 pages) but had removed it by midday, leaving only a couple of excerpts of the book online – including one in which Simpson describes killing his ex-wife while a friend of his named "Charlie" watched him do it. Today TMZ reported that it received a takedown notice from a trustee overseeing the bankruptcy case of Simpson – but not before hundreds, if not thousands, of people likely downloaded it and passed it on to friends.

Last week a bankruptcy judge granted the family of Ron Goldman (the man who was brutally stabbed, along with Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson) copyright ownership of the manuscript so that Simpson can't resell the book to another publisher and make a profit from it. The victims' families were awarded a $33.5 million judgment against Simpson in 1997, but Simpson has managed to avoid paying it by declaring bankruptcy. The Goldman family can reap profits from the book now if it's resold to another publisher.

The trustee overseeing the bankruptcy case took court action (pdf) against TMZ.com for posting the manuscript and wants the web site to disclose where it got the book. According to the trustee, TMZ, along with AOL and Time Warner, have caused harm to the Goldman family and others by diminishing the value of the book and ruining the chance of making any money off of future sales.

Of course it's a bit ironic that Time Warner – known for going after copyright infringers of its movies – is now in the hot seat for violating someone else's copyright. See this action that Warner Brothers took in January against a blogger who was offering content from WB movies.

The Simpson manuscript, which I managed to read before it was taken down, is composed of eight chapters and contains a significant number of typos and missing page headers, suggesting it's not the final version of the book, though very close to the final. In it, Simpson recounts his tempestuous relationship with Nicole. It's a strange read primarily because Simpson sounds so genial throughout most of it – that is, until you get to the chapter entitled "The Night in Question" in which he describes killing Nicole.

The tone of that chapter is much different from the rest of the book. Throughout most of the book he describes Nicole as an out-of-control crazy lady who was constantly playing emotional games with him and was hooked on cocaine during the weeks before she died. He, however, is depicted as a mostly-understanding husband and attentive father who grew increasingly exasperated by Nicole's erratic behavior and spent much of his time trying to avoid her emotional outbursts. Then in the chapter that describes the killing, he suddenly goes into an inexplicable rage after his friend "Charlie" appears at his house to give him disturbing news about Nicole's drug use and kinky behavior. The information drives him over the edge, and the understanding Simpson of previous chapters suddenly disappears.

Simpson takes off in his Bronco to Nicole's house, with Charlie beside him. Thankfully, he avoids providing a graphic description of the slashings, but that's only because he claims he blacked out while it was happening. Here's the strange scene in Nicole's courtyard that night where he was suddenly surprised by the appearance of Ron Goldman, who was returning some eyeglasses to Nicole. Nicole has slipped and fallen unconscious after coming at Simpson like a "banshee" but otherwise is unharmed at this point. "Charlie," rather than Simpson, is holding the knife:

I looked over at Goldman, and I was fuming. I guess he thought I was going to hit him, because he got into his little karate stance. "What the fuck is that?" I said. "You think you can take me with your karate shit?" He started circling me, bobbing and weaving, and if I hadn't been so fucking angry I would have laughed in his face. "O.J., come on!" It was Charlie again, pleading. Nicole moaned, regaining consciousness. She stirred on the ground and opened her eyes and looked at me, but it didn't seem like anything was registering. Charlie walked over and planted himself in front of me blocking my view. "We are fucking done here, man–let's go!" I noticed the knife in Charlie's hand, and in one deft move I removed my right glove and snatched it up. "We're not going anywhere," I said, turning to face Goldman. Goldman was still circling me, bobbing and weaving, but I didn't feel like laughing anymore. "You think you're tough, motherfucker?" I said. I could hear Charlie just behind me, saying something, urging me to get the fuck out of there, and at one point he even reached for me and tried to drag me away, but I shook him off, hard, and moved toward Goldman. "Okay, motherfucker!" I said. "Show me how tough you are!" Then something went horribly wrong, and I know what happened, but I can't tell you exactly how. I was still standing in Nicole's courtyard, of course, but for a few moments I couldn't remember how I'd gotten there, when I'd arrived, or even why I was there. Then it came back to me, very slowly: The recital–with little Sydney up on stage, dancing her little heart out; me, chipping balls into my neighbor's yard; Paula, angry, not answering her phone; Charlie, stopping by the house to tell me some more ugly shit about Nicole's behavior. Then what? The short, quick drive from Rockingham to the Bundy condo. And now? Now I was standing in Nicole's courtyard, in the dark, listening to the loud, rhythmic, accelerated beating of my own heart. I put my left hand to my heart and my shirt felt strangely wet. I looked down at myself. For several moments, I couldn't get my mind around what I was seeing. The whole front of me was covered in blood, but it didn't compute. Is this really blood? I wondered. And whose blood is it? Is it mine? Am I hurt?

As soon as that chapter finishes, Simpson goes back to declaring his innocence. Apparently in later versions the murder chapter includes more explicit language stating that the chapter is fictional and hypothetical. But in the manuscript TMZ posted, that kind of language isn't there and the chapter is presented as an actual account of what happened. And in an interview that Slate conducted with the book's ghostwriter, Pablo Fenjves, the author discloses that "a working title for the book at one point was not If I Did It, but I Did It. The title was suggested not by (publisher Judith) Regan, but by Simpson."

As for the Mystery Man named Charlie, he appears to be some kind of psychotic fabrication created to give Simpson an excuse for the out-of-control rampage that suddenly leads him to kill Nicole. How else to explain what appears to be uncharacteristic behavior from a man who, until that point, has been depicted as a loyal and caring husband and friend to Nicole?