While you complained and complained about Angelina Jolie making $14 million off her babies, and other celebs (Clay Aiken!) getting much much less to shill their spawns off onto the market, there is at least one actress who knew how to reach the most amount of people with pics of her newborn son Henry: with the tweeny social network MySpace:

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Is it October already? Only asking because it seems like only days ago Angelina Jolie was selling her twin baby pictures to the highest bidder (People, fyi) and the rumors are already swirling that the couple are looking into acquiring more assets. Baby ass-ets:

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Clay Aiken coming out of the very shallow closet for People magazine did not earn the singer the multimillions that are typical when negotiating front page deals. While magazines and glossies engage in bitter bidding wars to get a first glimpse of Brangelina's spawn (the final payout was $14.5 million), Aiken's own cover earned the singer around $500k, which is half of what even non-celeb Jamie Lynn Spears was able to negotiate for selling the first pics of her illegitimate child to OK!.

And Clay's cover had both homosexuality admission AND baby pics!

Sign of the depressing economy or gay glass ceiling? More lukewarm responses, after the jump:

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Getty photographer Brent Stirton just won the 2008 Visa d'Or Award for Feature photography for his acclaimed project on the slaughter of gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Maybe you've seen those photos, maybe you haven't. (We say: Make the effort.)

But there's another set of photos you've certainly spied: the People magazine pictures of Brangelina and their kids. Having shot Shiloh in 2006 and Knox and Vivienne this year (though uncredited), Stirton may have raised more cash ($20-plus million) and awareness for charity with his celebrity puff projects than the serious photojournalism he's made a career out of.

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Advertising regulations exist to keep the consumer safe. This is why tobacco companies can't advertise near churches or schools, why hardcore sex is not appropriate for subway station billboard, and why MySpace should be kept away from public parks where hateful children might congregate. But sometimes advertising rules are a bit too strict and are less about protecting the consumer than punishing the advertiser. That's basically the case with Wanted, the Angelina Jolie/James McAvoy assassin flick that already stormed through the U.S. But it's just hitting in Britain, and ads like this one have been yanked — because they glorify Dick Cheney's favorite hobby sport: violence.

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Throw in another hundred thousand copies, and you end up with 2.6 million newsstand copies sold — up from the original 2.5m estimate — of People's cover of Brangelina babies Knox and Vivienne. Originally labeled a "disappointment" by some, the issue is actually the best-selling edition of People in seven years, and its fourth-best newsstand performer in the mag's 35-year history — "behind the Sept. 11 issue (4.1 million single copies), the issue covering Princess Diana’s death (3 million) and the one covering the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. (2.8 million)."

Though the issue sold 1.1m copies more than the 1.5 million People usually does at the newsstand, there's zero chance the tabloid recouped its share of the $14 million photo payment. Helping the situation, though, is the extended amount of time the issue was on newsstands (it was released two days early and will stay on newsstands for an eventual three weeks); the 50-cent jacked up cover price of $4.49; and your stupid willingness to pay to see babies that are not your own.

Oy, Tom Cruise. While you were out there paunching yourself up for a role in Tropic Thunder, new (but not first time) mommy Angelina was taking all the good roles away for hard-working men like yourself. Yes: Men.

Philip Noyce's thriller Edwin A. Salt, about a CIA agent accused of being part of a Russian sleeper cell, is going through a round of rewrites, and probably a name change, to adapt the main character from male to female for Jolie, which is semi-amusing, because we've already seen her in drag.

Of course, Cruise had been slated to take the lead, but then demanded $20 million for the role and everyone laughed. (Lions For Lambs, anyone?)

While other male leads showed interest, the story being told around H'wood is that Jolie got wind of the project, loved it, and now the studios are willing to switch up Edwin's bits and pieces, though it "won't require that much of an overhaul to suit her."

That's quite a commitment to make for one actress, though she is one-half of the World's Most Famous Couple. But eschewing Cruise? And going from girl to guy? Something's afoot here, and we have an idea of what it may be: Angelina has become the first bankable female action star.

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It took exactly one day after the publication of Angelina Jolie's new babies for rumors about Angelina Jolie wanting another child to begin. Supposedly her next one will be adopted. From China. Because they had an earthquake there, and this makes Angelina sad. [FF]

Remember when Janice Min used to dedicate entire spreads to calling out her competitors for their factual mistakes? Us Weekly's "Faux News" provided us with endless fodder. Often, Min aimed her ire at Bauer's In Touch and Life & Style for their Brangelina baby news. Worth mentioning, then, that In Touch is calling out none other than Us Weekly for its (supposedly) inaccurate Brangelina baby news: "Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are setting the record straight about their newborn babies, Knox and Vivienne. Angelina denies US Weekly's recent report that she underwent fertility treatments. 'If they had been conceived though IVF, we would have been happy to discuss it,' she tells People magazine about the twins, who were born on July 12. 'But we have been fortunate never to have had fertility problems,' she adds."

When People teamed up with Britain's Hello! to offer a joint bid on Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's baby twins, splitting the $14 million fee (that's $3.5m per twin per mag), the U.S. tabloid secured North American rights to the pics, while Hello! would get to print the photos in the rest of the world. One might've thought this would be an even deal, with shots from last week's photo shoot spread evenly between the tabloids. That wasn't the case, according to Jolie Expert and LAT blogger Elizabeth Snead: "Hello's cover shot is even cuter, more intimate and personal than People's." Did Larry Hackett got robbed?

Rushing to put its Bragenlina twins cover on the newsstands, People has come up with this: An exhausted Angelina Jolie in her grandmother's nightie; a middle-aged Brad Pitt sporting a salt-and-pepper beard and crow's feet; biological daughter and pristine human being Shiloh holding new sister Vivienne; a tucked-away newborn Vivienne; a shielded view of son Knox; and not a peep from those adopted kids — that's what the inside pages are for. [People]

In case you need a break from Dateline's episode about the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office, point your browser at People.com on Sunday at 7pm for an Internet hug.

The first public photos of Knox and Vivienne Jolie-Pitt have already been taken! And, despite our suggestion to nobody in particular that Brad and Angelina split their newborn twins into two separate photo shoots to really maximize profit potential, the babies were photographed together.

But the babies will be split up in one sense: People magazine has secured North American rights to the photos, while British tabloid Hello!, which sports numerous international editions, will have other worldwide rights.

Sound familiar? That's because People and Hello! teamed up in 2006 to publish Brangelina's other baby, Shiloh.

In the end, the price is pegged somewhere between $11 and $15 million, though that could be off by as much as a multiple of two. And while the price is certainly one for the record books (for now), keep in mind that the price includes two babies; so really, we're talking bargain.

Not that it's any consolation to OK! publisher Richard Desmond.

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Congratulations, People! You've been fingered as the winner in the bidding for Brad Pitt and Angelina's baby twin photos. And while OK!'s Richard Desmond opened up his checkbook to secure the photos, everyone sort of expected you to nab the pictures, since The World's Most Famous Couple has a soft spot for ya. Now that you've been chosen to pay some $15 million (plus or minus $7 million) to the charity of Brangelina's choice, the big remaining industry question is: Will Getty Images "photojournalist" Brent Stirton — who shot Shiloh Jolie-Pitt for People in 2006 — get the Knox and Vivienne assignment? It's the boring question that shows we, just like a tabloid, we can drag out a single storyline forever!

Brad Pitt's loudmouthed attorneys at Lavely & Singer are, preemptively, trying to clamp down on a series of photos that "were surreptitiously taken of Mr. Pitt and his family as they engaged in familial activities on private property, namely, in the privacy of the estate in which they are presently residing in France and where they had a reasonable expectation of privacy." Not content with issuing a cease and desist letter after the pictures' publication, L&S want to make sure these photos never make it into the public eye. (Too late, as you'll see.)

Supposedly, the publication of these photos — showing Pitt and wife Angelina Jolie with the kids — infringe not just on Pitt's privacy rights in the State of California, but also in France!

Except, according to one understanding of the law, this is wrong. Oh, and also? In Touch already published the pics.

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