Now Viacom will STEAL your movie Viacom has claimed ownership of an independent filmmaker's film and now she has to fight them for it. They allow her to leave it on YouTube but they claim ownership and they get to collect data on who's watching.
posted on Jul 22, 2008 - View this thread

How did this man end of with a copy of the most iconic book in the English language? He says he got it from a friend in Cuba, but the Folger Library has identified it as the copy of Shakespeare's First Folio stolen from Durham University in 1988. Turns out that stealing the book is much easier than selling it.
posted on Jul 20, 2008 - View this thread

As we were talking about Joke Theft, here's an interesting case. It appears that the Daily Show may have stolen a joke from Penny Arcade.
posted on Jun 20, 2008 - View this thread

Take the Funny and Run , a history of notorious joke-thieves from Milton Berle and Robin Williams to Denis Leary, Carlos Mencia (previously) and Dane Cook.
posted on Jun 10, 2008 - View this thread

To Catch A Thief. How a Civil War buff's chance discovery led to a sting, a raid and a victory against traffickers in stolen historical documents. Related article: Pay Dirt in Montana. And photo gallery.
posted on Apr 27, 2008 - View this thread

Koro, previously, has gripped the streets of Kinshasa, Congo. Unlike the 1967 Koro Epidemic in Singapore, which was blamed on tainted pork, the afflicted men in Kinshasa have blamed the psychosomatic penile shrinkage on witchcraft by a rival sect, and responded with attempted lynchings. In order to prevent bloodshed of the kind seen in Ghana a decade ago, police have responded by apprehending the alleged sorcerers.
posted on Apr 25, 2008 - View this thread

"I mean he quite literally -- and in no way do I exaggerate when I say -- [Paul Simon] stole the songs from us."
posted on Apr 19, 2008 - View this thread

A trio of thieves have made off with over $150 Million in art from E.G. Buehrle Museum in Zurich, Switzerland. The four stolen paintings are Cézanne's The Boy in Red Waistcoat, Degas's Viscount Ludovic Lepic and His Daughter, Monet's Poppy Field Near Vetheuil and Van Gogh's Blooming Chestnut Branches. This comes only two weeks after 2 Picasso pieces were stolen in Pfaeffikon, Switzerland. No one has been caught in either thefts.
posted on Feb 11, 2008 - View this thread

Juststolen.net "was created by police officers to provide the best possible asset tracking and property recovery services in the world. JustStolen.net is an innovative tool designed to easily register assets in order to facilitate their recovery if they are lost or stolen. JustStolen.net joins forces with online auctions to help identify stolen property."
posted on Dec 6, 2007 - View this thread

For 200 years, the city has been the center of a shadowy network of bone traders who snatch up skeletons in order to sell them to universities and hospitals abroad. In colonial times, British doctors hired thieves to dig up bodies from Indian cemeteries. Despite changes in laws, a similar process is going strong today. (More on the unsettling subject of the human bone trade from the author of the first link, and his Wired article too. And Photos.) Via the excellent Sepia Mutiny.
posted on Dec 4, 2007 - View this thread

You wake up in the morning and step outside for a breath of fresh air. Groggy and coffee-less, it takes you a moment to notice that your yard has been invaded by lawn gnomes. Don't be a victim. Conversely, become a part of the problem. Missing a loved one?
posted on Nov 3, 2007 - View this thread

Hooker raped & robbed by justice system. Apparently, if you're a prostitute and you're gang-raped at gunpoint, that's not actually rape, but "theft of services". In Philadelphia, judge Teresa Carr Deni ruled exactly that in a case where a woman posted a Craigslist ad offering sex for money -- but when she met with her John, instead of the agreed upon exhange, he pulled a gun on her, raped her, then invited four other men to rape her as well. As if this weren't sad enough, a near-identical case -- with the same defendant -- came up four days later, and the prosecutor decided not to even try it as to not put the woman through the misery of being so resoundly denied justice. Devolution is real, spuds.
posted on Oct 20, 2007 - View this thread

Did Win Butler (of Arcade Fire) steal some guy's basketball? Blogger says he did (with comments), Wil Butler (Win's brother) says he didn't. Drama!
posted on Jun 5, 2007 - View this thread

John Waddell went to show his friends his latest masterpiece "The Gathering" only to find it stolen. Bronze statues can take Waddell 10 years to create and the piece was worth $384,000. The statues which made up the piece weighed between 750 lb - 1500 lb which could make the thieves up to $32,000 from the scrap metal, a minor fraction of their real worth. It is not the first time thieves have used art for scrap metal.
posted on Mar 5, 2007 - View this thread

The Ecstasy of Influence, A Plagiarism
posted on Feb 24, 2007 - View this thread

Joe Rogan vs. Ned Holness What do you do when a famous comedian is stealing jokes? If you're Joe Rogan, you climb onstage, embarrass him in front of his audience and post the entire exchange to your MySpace page.
posted on Feb 14, 2007 - View this thread

Teh Intarweb suXXors! Macleans, the venerable Canadian magazine of declining circulation, declares the Internet a failure. But they're not bitter.
posted on Oct 27, 2006 - View this thread

"The Scream" has been recovered. (First discussed here)
posted on Aug 31, 2006 - View this thread

Newsfilter: $75,000 in Bull Semen Is Stolen From Frederick Farm. Oy Vey. (via)
posted on Feb 4, 2006 - View this thread

Massive fraud, theft, corruption in Iraq rebuilding ...Iraqi money gambled away in the Philippines...spent on a swimming pool that was never used...US$700,000 in cash in an unlocked footlocker...millions to companies that never submitted required competitive bids or that were paid for unfinished work...paid US$14,000 on four separate occasions for the same job...US$1.3 million wasted on overpriced or duplicate construction or equipment not delivered..."needlessly disbursed more than US$1.8 million" of the estimated US$2.3 million spent for renovating the library...from new auditor reports from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
posted on Jan 30, 2006 - View this thread

Alistair Cooke's bones have been stolen by a modern day gang of bodysnatchers. A sad and gruesome posthumous news appearance for the ever-dignified Letter from America presenter.
posted on Dec 22, 2005 - View this thread

Books return home. Librarians do a little dance. Back in 1919, Collyer's Eye was the first newspaper to report the details of the Chicago Black Sox scandal. This year, as the Sox neared the end of their 88-year pennant drought, bound volumes containing one of the few remaining copies of the newspaper disappeared from the library of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. This week, thanks to an apparent attack of conscience on the part of the thief, they mysteriously reappeared on a desk inside the University's main reference room. Libraries aren't always this lucky.
posted on Dec 9, 2005 - View this thread

With the apparent theft of ancient maps from Yale and the Getty admitting to displaying stolen antiquities from Italy, what does the blackmarket antiquities trade look like?
posted on Oct 5, 2005 - View this thread

Petrol prices hurting your wallet? Try stealing it instead! A Sydney man has been accused of siphoning 1,000 litres (265 gallons) of fuel from a service station into a large home-made tank in his van. Police allege the 36-year-old man used a Toyota Town Ace van to take petrol from a service station's underground tanks. Another 44,000 litres of fuel (or there about) is yet to be accounted for though.

Police allegedly found fittings and equipment inside the van that could be used to steal petrol from service stations, including a home made tank.

Hard times huh? Sorry there's no photo to go with this. The guy's van is an awesome sight though. Best I've got is streaming video via ABC News (Windows HQ or LQ).
posted on Sep 19, 2005 - View this thread

What has happened to Iraq's missing $1bn? "The money missing from all ministries under the interim Iraqi government appointed by the US in June 2004 may turn out to be close[r] to $2bn... Many Iraqi soldiers and police have died because they were not properly equipped. In Baghdad they often ride in civilian pick-up trucks vulnerable to gunfire, rocket- propelled grenades or roadside bombs. For months even men defusing bombs had no protection against blasts because they worked without bullet-proof vests. These were often promised but never turned up."
posted on Sep 18, 2005 - View this thread

BurgerTheft! Fuddruckers steals a flash based clone of BurgerTime from an indie developer without telling him. But rather than download it and host it themselves, they just point directly to his version of the game, which is spectacularly dumb. For a short time only, you can view the results if you click here. Wait till the annoying animation ends, go to the "Fuddrockers" tab, and try to play Burger Time.
posted on Sep 2, 2005 - View this thread

That would explain the $3000 dollar curry on my mastercard statement. Some Indian call centres are making a bit the side. Seems a fairly obvious scenario in retrospect.
posted on Aug 14, 2005 - View this thread

They dance and eat as they steal. Yomango, a counter-but-consumerist-culture of shoplifting, surfaced July 2002 in Spain. It's shoplifting as a movement—taught in workshops, choreographed, organized as missions, and executed with prankish gusto on three continents. Why? One, it's civil disobedience that believes stealing to stay alive should be permitted. Two, it takes back what once belonged to everyone. Three, there's humor in it, even with the communistic undertones and its little red book. Discussion: Dark Matter, Las Agencias, and the Aesthetics of Tactical Embarrassment. A Poliedric Debate On Collabora Art. ¿Lo quieres?¿Lo tienes? (Spanish). More about Yomango: Ten Style Tips for a Yomango Life. A gallery of promos, news, and event photos. Yomango fashion show. Yomango tango. Yomango dinner.
posted on Jul 31, 2005 - View this thread

LossofPrivacyFilter: 1) Patriot Act Expansion Bill Approved in Secret , which now provides a new ‘administrative subpoena’ authority (that) would let the FBI write and approve its own search orders for intelligence investigations, without prior judicial approval. ...Flying in the face of the Fourth Amendment, this power would let agents seize personal records from medical facilities, libraries, hotels, gun dealers, banks and any other businesses without any specific facts connecting those records to any criminal activity or a foreign agent. ..., and from the Justice Department: 2) Most health care employees can't be prosecuted for stealing personal data, and finally, 3) Citibank admits losing 4 million customer files.
These 3 examples all within the past few days--any others i missed?
posted on Jun 8, 2005 - View this thread

Munch's "The Scream" destroyed. (?) According to the paper Dagbladet, it has been. "The Madonna" as well.
posted on Apr 28, 2005 - View this thread

Gas Pump Hacker. "CHICAGO -- In a bold and outrageous theft staged in broad daylight, a driver pumped about $900 worth of gasoline at a suburban gas station. The man removed the panel of a pump in Country Club Hills and manipulated the mechanics of the pump so that it would continue to pump gas without registering inside the station... Other cars then pulled up to the pump and, apparently, cut deals with the thief, who then filled up their tanks and took off..."
posted on Apr 16, 2005 - View this thread

ChoicePoint warning people that they're possible targets of fraud. ChoicePoint, Inc. the company that provided the list to help purge Florida voter records of "felons" in the 2000 election, electronically delivered thousands of sensitive financial data reports to possible identity thieves in LA. The reports contained names, addresses, SS numbers, and financial information. They're sending letters to 110,000 people across the country warning them they may be possible victims. ChoicePoint, a subsidiary of Equifax, has been discussed here before. Interestingly: "ChoicePoint, as a matter of policy, does not verify the accuracy of its data and argues that it is the user's responsibility to verify accuracy."
posted on Feb 17, 2005 - View this thread

How easy is it to steal a bike in NYC? (qt mov) New York City is home to nearly 112,000 bicycle riders, unfortunately it is also home to some of the worst bike thieves in the country. A bicycle is stolen in NYC every 68 minutes. The Neistat Brothers decided to find out just how easy it really is.
posted on Feb 14, 2005 - View this thread

Former head of Vivendi, Jena-Marie Messier, is being investigated by the FBI for possible involvement with the infamous Gardner Museum art heist.
posted on Feb 11, 2005 - View this thread

Nominee for the #3 position at the CIA is an "expert" in 5 finger discounts
posted on Oct 3, 2004 - View this thread

How safe is your pension? (UK) 'Nine million people in this country, young and old, pay a slice of their wage into final salary occupational pension schemes. But Channel 4's economics correspondent Liam Halligan reveals that most people don't realise they have no legal right to that pension money whatsoever. And some people have lost the lot.'
Think Britain's social safety net is more secure than that of the US? Think again.
Related :- Pensions Theft, a campaigning website set up by pensions activists, some of whom lost their pensions when their company went bust.
posted on Sep 15, 2004 - View this thread

"I was lost, proper lost, but thanks to Cris Formage and the fine folks at The Epsilon Program, I've found a better way to live. No more cocaine, no more heroin, no more ceaselss, boundless self pleasure. henceforth, ladies and mental patients, I am following the words of the tract!" - Maccer

Viral marketing nicely done in advance of the new Rockstar games production of Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (some slightly NSFW words and images)
posted on Aug 27, 2004 - View this thread

Armed Robbers Steal Munch's 'The Scream' in Oslo [more inside]
posted on Aug 22, 2004 - View this thread

Clinton Adviser Berger Cleared of Document Theft Oh. By the way...President Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger -- who'd been accused of stealing classified material from the National Archives -- has been cleared of all wrongdoing.
posted on Jul 30, 2004 - View this thread

The 'nightmare' fall of Svend Robinson: Canada's first openly gay MP threw his career into doubt yesterday with a shocking revelation that he had stolen a piece of jewellery last weekend.
posted on Apr 16, 2004 - View this thread

Television thief (64) still in jail after 33 years , parole denied 25 times while same board releases murderer after 10 years. Justice?
posted on Feb 1, 2004 - View this thread

Grand Theft Avocado [NYT, reg. req.] "When the Super Bowl comes, there is going to be thievery," Mr. Luce said. "People want guacamole." At a dollar a pound and up, avocado theft is a growing worldwide problem. Do you know where your dip came from?
posted on Jan 25, 2004 - View this thread

The trade in stolen Asian relics is booming. TIME reports on how cultural sites are being looted and precious artifacts smuggled overseas. Sometimes they're returned, but much of Asia's cultural heritage is being lost.
posted on Oct 26, 2003 - View this thread

"Going Wild in Urban America - To be an individual hunter-gatherer in America is to lead a lonely life." Southern Californian hippy college student alienates friends, gains weight by subsisting on stolen figs (more inside).
posted on Sep 30, 2003 - View this thread

The August 9, 2003 edition of the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram Al-Arabi featured an interview with Dr. Nabil Hilmi, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Al-Zaqaziq who, together with a group of Egyptian expatriates in Switzerland, is preparing an enormous lawsuit against "all the Jews of the world."
For material stolen from the Pharaonic Egyptians during the Exodus ...
(link via The Daily Grail)
posted on Aug 29, 2003 - View this thread

First Stolen Segway Recovered. It was inevitable. And it was all caught on tape. Segway owners and members of SegwayChat covertly planned and implemented a successful sting operation to recover a stolen Segway HT. (Main link goes to 5 MB embedded Windows Media video of actual sting taking place!)
posted on Aug 14, 2003 - View this thread

Nigerian email scam dudes. Possibly the first visual evidence of the rapscallions behind the scam that just keeps on sucking in new 'investors'.
posted on Jun 14, 2003 - View this thread

Stip Naked and Walk, Thief. On the chests of the men had been scrawled an Arabic phrase that translates as "Ali Baba - Thief."
posted on Apr 28, 2003 - View this thread

From a theft at the U.S. Mint to a scam artist in Philly, from a playboy Egyptian king to a Secret Service sting at the Waldorf-Astoria, ending up at a record-breaking $7.59 million auction: the fascinating history of a coin. (via BoingBoing)
posted on Mar 8, 2003 - View this thread

So that's why the economy is so bad. The USPS is looking for $65 million dollars worth of white mail postal tubs. If you work in an office or deal with a mailroom, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The penalty for not coughing them up? 3 years imprisonment and a $1000 fine. (I read it on the side of one of the boxes I have by my desk).
posted on Dec 10, 2002 - View this thread