When Oliver Stone's World Trade Center is released this summer, some people may do a double take. Those people might even imagine that they've already seen the film and decide to watch Superman Returns one more time. At least that's what lawyers for Paramount Pictures claim in a recent suit against Chris Moukarbel, creator of a 12-minute short based on a bootlegged copy of the Stone movie's script. Moukarbel, a recent film school grad, made his film with student actors and released it for free on the Internet.

Why'd Moukarbel make the film? He's an artist whose work focuses on "memorial [...] and the way in which political events are edified." Oliver Stone, with his penchant for historicization and forthcoming would-be blockbuster about the most traumatic event in recent American history, seems like a perfect muse. And looking at it through the lens of a case like Campbell v. Acuff Rose (the 2 Live Crew v. Roy Orbison case), it's probably legal. Of the four elements reviewed in that seminal decision regarding fair use, Moukarbel's work is less commercial than 2 Live Crew's, but it sounds like he changed less of the orginal work. Silencing non-commercial commentary on a matter of public concern? That ain't what copyright is for.

Here's the full WaPo article.