Content area
Full text
Ever since Harry Knowles burst to prominence with Aintitcoolnews.com, the Internet has blossomed with hundreds of movie geek Web sites, each one crammed with its own oddball assortment of news, reviews and message boards devoted to "Star Wars," Quentin Tarantino and other pressing matters. For movie fans, the sites represent authentic participatory democracy--everyone's opinion or obsession carries equal weight.
But earlier this year, Chris Parry, a 32-year-old writer and ex- production manager who runs the site efilmcritic.com, began noticing a lot of very inauthentic postings. They read like outright publicity plugs, or what Net denizens call "plants," most of them touting films released by Universal Pictures.
On May 30, filmfreak234 wrote: "Lemme just say that I really can't wait to see undercover brother ... am I alone here? For one it looks hella funny, and two its got denise richards. You just can't get better than that combo!!!! Apparently harry knowles thinks so too. You know, from aintitcool.com. He said it was the bomb. If you wanna see what he wrote check out www.aintitcool.com and look for it on your own ... I'm definitely stoked for this one."
On July 9, fangoria17 wrote, enthusing about "The Silence of the Lambs": "I can't wait until the prequel Red Dragon comes out this fall. I watched the trailer for it at http://www.apple.com/trailers and it got me really excited. Check it out and tell me what you think."
When Parry got a series of messages plugging "Blue Crush," another Universal summer release, he became suspicious, because all the messages, as he put it, "were obviously scripted and always had a link to the trailer for the film." When he checked the IP, or Internet Protocol, address of the messages, he discovered that they originated from the same place, Universal Pictures' registered corporate site, MCA.com.
Parry's movie site wasn't the only one being "seeded" with fake fan messages. Brian Renner, a 17-year-old high school student who runs the site themovieinsider.com from his home in the Detroit suburbs, received identical postings for the films "Undercover Brother" and "Red Dragon." When he ran a check on their IP addresses, they were the same as for the messages at Parry's site: Universal Pictures.
Renner also got several suspicious postings promoting...