Cougar Town director derides Kim Dotcom letter
July 27, 2012
By Colin Mann
Bruce Leddy, a writer/director whose credits include Cougar Town, MADtv, and the indie feature The Wedding Weekend, has used the pages of the Hollywood Reporter to pour scorn on an open letter from Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom in which he claimed he was not Hollywood’s enemy.
Dotcom was arrested in January 2012, but a New Zealand court has delayed an extradition hearing until March 2013 because of questions about the search and seizure of evidence by the US where he faces charges of Internet piracy and fraud. He has been granted bail, but a number of assets have been seized.
In the letter, Dotcom tries to blame Hollywood – not his own actions and theft of copyrighted material – for his legal problems. “Providing ‘freemium’ cloud storage to society is not a crime. What will Hollywood do when smartphones and tablets can wirelessly transfer a movie file within milliseconds?,” he wrote, suggesting he was at the forefront of creating the cool stuff that will allow creative works to thrive in an Internet age. “I have the solutions to your problems. I am not your enemy,” he claimed.
Leddy sardonically describes Dotcom’s story as “inspiring”. “To earn hundreds of million dollars without actually ever making anything is just so cutting edge and futuristic! Hollywood is so ‘dark ages’. In the future, everyone should be like Megaupload: free to profit from what anyone makes, writes, creates, designs, or owns in whatever way they can. I say if Hollywood is going to spend all this time and effort making these movies and TV shows, employing hundreds of thousands of hard-working Americans and union members, and then let a guy like you become a multi-millionaire off its work, it’s our own damn fault! Holy cow are we dumb! LOL.”
Leddy says he is tired of being a chump and writing and directing stuff for a decent wage when he could just as easily share other people’s stuff on the Internet and make huge money off it. “So I’ve decided to start selling all your property on eBay, beginning with your pile of luxury cars. That Mercedes Brabus SV12 alone will easily pay for my kids’ college tuitions. I mean, sure, they don’t technically belong to me. But if I can find a country where they don’t really have rules about that kind of thing yet, I’m going to be living large! Probably change my name to Bruce Web$tarr. Extra ‘r’ for extra RICH! You like it?”