Roger Friedman loses his job for ‘promoting’ piracy

Entertainment writer Roger Friedman is out at FoxNews.com after posting a review of an illegally downloaded version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine last week.

On his column, Friedman seemed to endorse watching pirated DVDs. According to him, watching pirated movies on a computer is “so much easier than going out in the rain,” and that Wolverine “exceeds expectations at every turn.”

The article was quickly removed from the site but a copy can be found here.

Fox News is the sister company of 20th Century Fox, the maker of the multimillion-dollar X-Men movie set to debut May 1.

This afternoon, the company issued the following statement, “Roger Friedman’s views in no way reflect the views of News Corporation. 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. When we advised Fox News of the facts they took immediate action, removed the post, and promptly terminated Mr. Friedman.”