Roger Friedman, the FoxNews.com columnist who foolishly reviewed a pirate cut of “Wolverine” (I mean, who the heck would even want to see it? It’s not even finished! You’re robbing yourself of an experience, kids!) before letting his readers know where to download it from (and how!), has been let go from the website.

As I was saying yesterday on the site – albeit on a totally different topic (Jackie Earle Haley being cast as Freddy Krueger) – if you say it, they will hear you. And when most of us demanded Friedman be tossed to the curb like an inebriated stripper with needle marks in her rear, Fox heard; Fox acted. We, as in an independent movie website, would be fined, sued, shut down and forced to rub coconut oil into Tom Rothman’s shoulders for the rest of our natural lives if we’d pulled the stunt – why shouldn’t Friedman receive the same punishment? Fuck with fire, you’ll be scolded. Fox proved to us that nobody gets away with pulling a stunt like that – not even someone that’s associated with their company.

Still, I’m thinking Friedman’s now regretting his decision to press ‘start download’ and ultimately resize the window on his Windows Media Player so he can watch an unfinished annoyingly-watermarked bootleg of the new “X-Men” spin-off.. or maybe he isn’t? The guy does seem to be a few cookies short of an Oreo Thickshake. He has to be – there’s no other explanation for what he did. I feel sorry for the guy, if even a little bit, but am more confused by his actions than anything – as you can tell.

Friedman was a columnist for the FoxNews.com website for 10 years….10 years!….A decade! In other words, he’s been writing entertainment stories for the portal since the first “American Pie” movie came out (there’s been six since!).It was part of his life. And now it’s over. And why? Because he decided to give Fox the finger and review their film. Whatever the reason, it was hardly worth it bro. Is any film worth losing your job over!? (I did take the day off from my job at a fast food place to see “Terminator 2 : Judgment Day” when I was about fifteen, so I suppose there are some movies we might consider are worth the risk of finding a pink slip in your locker). I can only imagine Friedman was paid rather handsomely at FoxNews.Com – and now that weekly cheque is gone. I just want to know what was going through the man’s mind when he writing that article? Was he on a suicide mission for Osama? Did the Cylons turn him on? Had he never seen one of those Anti-Piracy ads before a film? – he should’ve, your DVD player doesn’t let you skip over them and go straight to the movie. I can only assume he thought ‘nobody would be reading’ so thought he might as well mention it, or, the post was originally meant for his private MySpace website and unfortunately got posted on FoxNews.com instead. I’m making excuses for him, aren’t I? Why bother… He’d probably be making an example of myself, or Robert Sanchez, or Harry Knowles, or even Nikki Fenke, if we’d done the same thing.

So how did it go down? Was he hunted down in a Starbucks and forced to spread ‘em across a counter whilst two FBI officers scoffed down strawberry donuts?

Deadline Hollywood Daily says, ”First, Roger Ailes, who overseas Fox News, deleted the offending post after he was contacted by 20th Century Fox about it. And then Ailes fired Friedman as a freelance Fox News entertainment writer. I hear the move was done with the full support of News Corp”.

“He promoted piracy. He basically suggested that viewing a stolen film is OK, which is absolutely intolerable. So we fired him,” a source told the site. “Fox News acted promptly on all fronts.”

News Corp issued this 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. Once we learned of Roger Friedman’s post we asked Fox News to remove it, which they did immediately.”

We’re not goodie-goodies. We’ve done things that have got us in trouble with the studios before. All the websites have. It’s part of the fun. In fact, if you don’t make waves in the indy movie-fansite world… you’re unlikely to keep readers. They like troublemakers. But this, this just didn’t make sense – everyone knows Johnny Depp’s the only one allowed to embark in Piracy.

As I said, I do feel sorry for the guy – he has lost his job, after all – but at the same time I wholeheartedly agree with Fox’s decision to fire Friedman. Some of these chaps at the big corporate sites need to know they’re not any better, or any more above-the-law, than us. It’s an important day for the web community.