As I write this article, one of the best websites for movie news which I visit every single day
IESB.net has been taken down because of those spy photo's they had on their site for the
Iron Man movie. When I said that Paramount needed to do something about the guy's taking the photo's yesterday, this isn't what I meant. What I meant was add more security, add more enclose, make sure you block any public access points with big black covers.... anything that will stop the guy's taking the photos. Shutting down the website for hosting the images (which sites like ours and
The Movie Blog have promoted) without simply asking IESB to remove them from their site like they continuously do for
AICN is a shameful and disgusting act. These were legal photo's, taken in a public area and although yes they were extremely spoiler-ish for the film, I'm positive that the good folks at the site would have taken the images down out of respect for the filmmakers if it had been requested of them. So this brings out the question... who is right in this argument? Are Paramount right for shutting down IESB because they promoted very spoiler-ish and potentially damaging images from the set of Iron Man on their website? Or are Paramount completely in the wrong for taking down the site, which after all was promoting completely 100% legal photo's which were taken in a public space? Over the last couple of weeks here at Obsessed With Film, we have promoted the spy footage from both the
set of The Dark Knight (which had huge spoilers) and
Iron Man.... is it morally wrong for us to promote this stuff? It's certainly not legally wrong as Paramount would have you believe (although I wouldn't want to mess with them in the court of law) but is it morally wrong to have such explicit images from the set be posted on websites? My take on this is simple... Paramount were completely out of order in shutting down IESB and it was blatantly a show of power from the studio. A "You don't post images from our set without our permission" type of message. Paramount did have the right to have been annoyed at IESB for the images but if they had used their common sense and simply spoke to the guys at the site, I'm positive this matter could have been resolved. What is your take on all of this? Are the set photo's and video's that we promote on blogs such as this one which offers movies like Iron Man
FREE ADVERTISING doing something that's morally wrong and something we should be punished for, or are studio's taking the matter completely out of proportion and using it as a chance to flex their muscles? At 10.42am (U.K. time) IESB.net is still down. Thanks to
The Movie Blog for bringing this to our attention.