OK, enough wet-blanketness.

A final note: This has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with copyright; if the movie is a copyright violation, then it is illegal. If it is not a copyright violation, then there is nothing wrong with it. There is no Free Speech fair use exclusion. Such an exclusion would make a mockery of copyright law, as nearly anything can be cast as free speech.

You may desire that it be OK to produce that movie, you may think it is morally necessary to allow people to produce such movies with copyrighted materials... I have no problems with those positions, those are perfectly acceptable normative statements. However, the issue of what IP law really says is not changed by such things, and confusing desires with reality does not enhance credibility.

If it's not a parody (which I certainly don't think it "clearly" is) then it's just out-and-out copyright infringement, which I will not stand behind and recommend that you do not either. We all need the basic principles of copyright to protect us from being exploited by large companies, and we should not weaken them for our own amusement.

Further question: Is the movie really a parody? If so, exactly what is it parodying? The "Stormtroopers" bit at the end may have the nature of a parody, but the rest strikes not so much as a parody as just an attempt at humor. If you sit and analyse anything long enough, you can ascribe nearly any attribute to it, even being a "parody" of something. I'm just plain not certain that the spot parodies anything deliberately; it would probably take a court to sort it out (though I'd personally be satisfied to talk to the authors for a bit).

Perhaps the movie is legit and AP was hasty in ordering it removed... certainly Dave's suggestion that AP should make friends instead of enemies is not out of line... but the question is not one-sided and we do not benefit from acting as if AP is totally incorrect.

In other words, yes, I'm directly contradicting Dave's call for people to mirror the file. Don't do it, it's not worth the fight. (Convincing AP that it's OK for people to do this is another issue entirely; copyrights don't need to be defended and aren't lost if you don't crack down on abuse. The movie didn't hurt AP whatsoever.)

A good overview of the situation. Astonishingly, Wired does not provide a link to the report itself, I had to go find it. It has a breakdown by every country in the world of the status of freedom of the press in that country... for instance:

Grim Net Censorship Report: "Censorship of the Internet by governments is spreading and may become a threat to traditional media liberty, a report on press freedom said on Wednesday. 'The explosion of news and information on the World Wide Web is tempting governments, developed and developing, politically free and not free, to consider restricting content on the Internet,' said the report conducted by human rights group Freedom House."

France French media are free, though radio and television are subject to political influence. The government’s financial support of journalism and the registration of journalists have raised concerns about media independence. Publication of opinion poll results is prohibited in the week preceding any election. Five journalists were attacked by police at two demonstrations. Another journalist was arrested and his offices searched for refusing to reveal sources of his reporting.