Michael Moore's Copyright Schizophrenia Explained

By Eriq Gardner

Cherry-bomb filmmaker Michael Moore won some love from those who favor loose copyright laws when announced that he doesn''t have any problem with folks downloading his latest film "Slacker Uprising" and sharing it.

Ah, how quickly a romance can sour. Moore's lawyers have sent a takedown notice to a torrent site based in Sweden, leaving many to wonder whether it was practical and wise for Moore to allow file-sharing inside the U.S. and Canada in a digital age that seems to eradicate geographical constraints.

But Moore is trying to reconcile the relationship with explanation as to why he needs to at least try to impose some boundaries on his copyright permissiveness.

“I only own the US and Canadian rights," he tells filesharing news site TorrentFreak. "So my hands are tied."

In other words, he can only give away rights that he's entitled to in the first place. He's one documentary about the copyright system away from becoming BFF with the EFF.