Last month, the big broadcast networks NBC, CBS, and Fox filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against RedLasso, the video clipping service used by many blogs to post footage of Dancing With the Stars contestants falling down and Fox News anchors displaying their whiteness. While RedLasso argued they wanted to work with television content producers to create a good-for-everyone revenue-sharing model, the networks took a different approach: stop stealing our content and building your business on it.

Funny, then, that the same companies responsible for trying to kill RedLasso are using the very service on their own websites.

On last night's Countdown, Keith Olbermann named Rupert Murdoch his "Worst Person in the World" for the inside baseball decision of firing HarperCollins chief Jane Friedman, supposedly because she quashed the O.J. Simpson book and fired Judith Regan, despite Murdoch wanting the book out.

But maybe Friedman's fate was sealed much earlier? Like, three years ago? When her ally Lachlan Murdoch, son of Rupert, left the company, and she had to begin reporting to COO Peter Chernin? And had to start meeting certain financial targets? Which would've meant layoffs? That Friedman would've had a problem with?

With this week's ouster of HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman, so too come the exciting details. Like how Rupert Murdoch took a meeting with Friedman's deputy Brian Murray on Monday, and then met with Friedman on Wednesday, where she was told she'd be leaving the company, and then named Murray her successor.

But another bit of HarperCollins news makes headlines this week: That the publisher is suing former Star columnist and reality television star Victoria Gotti for the $70,000 advance they paid her in a 2005 two-book deal, one of which was to be a memoir, but never materialized. Her literary agent says no big whoop, and that she'll return the advance. Oh, and maybe the reason she never turned in that memoir is because they fired her confidant Judith Regan and all her underlings, and she didn't feel like commuting in from Long Island to make any new friends.

As News Corp.'s HarperCollins pushes out its chief Jane Friedman, Rupert Murdoch is smartly installing her deputy, Brian Murray, who, at 41, is 21 years her junior and is expected to usher is a new methodology. Or whatever. Basically, he's expected to up profits.

No matter than Friedman has managed to double HarperCollins' take during her 10 years there; in the fiscal year's last nine months, her profits have slid $6 million, to $132 million, over last year. Which, theoretically, is not that big of a slide. But it's part of the newest trend in book publishing: Out with the old, in with the new. Which isn't exactly a new trend, but anyone will point to the ouster of Random House CEO Peter Olson last month, and his replacement of Markus Dohle, as evidence.

By all accounts, the move comes as a surprise, with top-level insiders at the publishing house not expecting her departure. So how to explain why Friedman, inarguably an industry talent, was given the heave ho?

Well, this Bill Moyers book deal might have something to do with it. Moyers, of course, was famously quoted in 2004 saying this, which couldn't have sat well with Murdoch:

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The most worthwhile takeaway from today's O'Reilly/News Corp. vs Olbermann/GE feud story isn't the whiny phone calls from Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch to Jeff Zucker and Jeff Immelt complaining about Keith's attacks on Fox News, or the whiny phone calls from Steve Capus to Ailes complaining about O'Reilly's attacks on NBC News correspondent Richard Engel.

It's that News Corp. wanted an lefty blog's Bill O'Reilly "ambush video" to be off limits for Olbermann, even though O'Reilly's own use of ambush video cameras drive some of the show's highest ratings and YouTube views.

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While this morning's Page Six item about Keith Olbermann recyles previous Jossip reports, it also makes one thing more clear: News Corp. has many vehicles to push its anti-MSNBC/GE crusade, and Bill O'Reilly's diatribes are just one of them.

Repeating our previous reports about Keith Olbermann's behavior and conflicts with other talent like David Gregory and Dan Abrams, P6 also finds itself on the front lines of O'Reilly's battle against the network — which, it turns out, News Corp. tried to quell at the highest levels, and is now more than content to keep supporting. Just like the real war!

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If the rumor floating around is true, if, indeed, 50 Cent is about to ink a $300 million, 360 deal with arch-conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s Myspace to rival Jay-Z’s measly-by-comparison $100 million deal with Live Nation, then this would be huge, ground-breaking, major front-page news.

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There will be no New York Post-Newsday News Corp. tag team to take on the Times, with Rupert Murdoch having dropped out of the bidding for Tribune Co.'s Long Island paper. Instead, Cablevision will buy 97 percent, for $650 million, of the paper, adding the rag to its massive cable biz front on Long Island.

Along with Newsday, Cablevision also picks up "related assets," including freebie paper am New York, a detail the Times surprisingly left out of its coverage. (The WSJ did not.)

So while the deal doesn't actually include Newsday's real estate, as original reports said, the two papers Cablevision picks up guarantees you're about to be inundated with ticket sales ads for Madison Square Garden, which it conveniently also owns. As well as Radio City Music Hall, the New York Knicks, and the New York Rangers..

Peter Chernin, president and COO of News Corp., the company run by Rupert Murdoch with no actual political will, but simply toward whichever way the money train is headed, donated $12,500 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, recorded March 31, adding to last June's $2,300 donation to Hillary Clinton's primary campaign and $2,300 to her general election campaign. His wife, Megan, is a Barack Obama supporter. [WOD] Chernin has a history of donating to Democratic candidates, including John Kerry. His win-loss ratio for the candidates he donated to? 24-8. [Newsmeat]

JOSSIP REPORTS As Rupert Murdoch's NDS-EchoStar pay-TV hacking lawsuit continues this morning, an inside source tells Jossip that NDS chief Abe Peled will appear in the courtroom, in person, to testify.

On April 30 he submitted a video deposition to the California court, but suddenly disappeared to London without testifying in person, though he was scheduled to appear as a witness for his company, which makes DirecTV's customer access cards.

Peled's NDS, a News Corp. subsidiary, stands accused of hacking EchoStar's access cards and posting the information on the web for pirates to use to gain free access to NDS competitor NagraStar (which EchoStar provides service to).

In an interesting twist, Peled escaped testimony because NDS listed him as a witness, which meant plaintiff EchoStar felt it didn't need to subpoena him to testify. Oops.

But today, we're told, they'll get to question him. Murdoch, meanwhile, is not expected for the 8:30am local call time.

Guess what keeps getting more glamorous? The espionage trial between EchoStar/DISH Network and News Corp.'s NDS unit, a five-year old case launched with EchoStar accusing NDS of hacking, in the 1990s, its security code and posting it on the web, allowing anybody to create falsified security cards and scam themselves some free DISH Network satellite TV, all because Murdoch refused to merge their pay-TV companies.

The Rupert is now refusing to testify in the civil trial, even though he'd basically just have to nod or shake his head to acknowledge whether or not he knew about the alleged hackings. If he did know, argued the judge overseeing the trial, the jury might be inclined to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars in punitive damages. (EchoStar's chief Charles Ergan already took the stand.)

But Murdoch doesn't want to take the stand. Any really, why should he? Doesn't a rebuttal to a news outlet count as valid testimony? Murdoch told ABC News "that he 'absolutely' denied NDS was involved in any hacking," though we're unclear whether is "absolutely denying" the same thing as "absolutely not doing."

SNOOZEDAY Rupert Murdoch does not plan to up his $580 million offer for Tribune Co.'s Newsday, even though Cablevision bested his pitch with a $650 million bid. This is either Murdoch's way of exiting the bidding, or his way of saying he's still a better owner even if he's not willing to cough up $70 million more. Oh, but also: Cablevision's offer includes the paper's real estate, so the offers are pretty much even.

Was it when Fox News claims to be a cable news "pioneer," or when they claimed to be "fair and balanced," that wronged you?

A "NEWS CORP. IS AWESOME" ad appearing in the British press, featuring a timeline that included the line "1996… Fox News Channel, pioneer of fair and balanced news coverage, is born. Today, it dominates cable news in the US," offended at least two people enough that they complained to the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Agency.

FNC was not a "pioneer," they claimed, because news channels had been around before Rupert Murdoch's network. And the idea that they're "fair and balanced"? Well, you're familiar with that argument.

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As Rupert Murdoch deals with the fallout from ousting managing editor Marcus Brauchli, he's got another mini crisis to handle: The island nation of Fiji is forcibly removing Fiji Times publisher Evan Hannah from its borders.

Courtesy 2006's bloodless coup that put military commander Frank Bainimarama in charge, Fiji now views Hannah as a national security threat. He was detained and faces deportation; he's expected to leave for Australia on Friday. All this follows the deportation of fellow Aussie Russell Hunter, publisher of rival Fiji Sun, who was kicked out in February for, what else, criticizing Bainimarama's regime.

Pretty harsh treatment, especially for a country whose interim prime minister just made a public statement promising to uphold media freedom. Though it's not like these guys were charged with "committing journalism" and sent to prison like some other members of the press.

Good for Robert Thomson, the Wall Street Journal publisher-slash-"head of content" that got Tim Arango's treatment in today's Times Biz section. He's managed to secure a softer image than a typical Rupert Murdoch operative, eschewing any notion he's going to unleash a pair of Dobermans on his cadets.

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"The dirty little secret about Rupert Murdoch's play to buy another New York media property in addition to the ones he already owns is that there's little anybody can do to stop him," argues the Hollywood Reporter's Brooks Boliek.

Sad, but true. Just as Donald Trump's Trump Soho swatted away critics by beginning physical construction on his downtown condo-hotel, making the project inevitable, Murdoch has shaped the debate about his purchase of Newsday as a "when" debate, not an "if."

And even as Murdoch faces off against New York foe Mort Zuckerman for control of Newsday, there's actually little the Federal Communications Commission could actually do to stop Murdoch from snapping up the paper if Tribune gives the OK.

How come?

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We've been the victim of more than one hacking attempt, so we know what it's like to have your website taken offline against your will. So does CNN. Facing uproar over anchor Jack Cafferty's "goons" and "thugs" comments about China, various groups, including one aptly named HackCNN, have made it their priority to take the cable net's homepage offline. (They also managed to deface The Sports Network's site, swapping out sports scores for lines like, "Tibet was, is, and always will be a part of China!.") It's called a "denial of service" attack, where hackers dispatch botnets, or networks of thousands and thousands of computer they illicitly control, to flood a specific site with erroneous traffic, causing it to sputter out and become unreachable by normal visitors.

But the Time Warner outfit isn't the only big media company involved in scheme involving rogue technology. Five years later into a civil lawsuit, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is standing in front of a jury on accusations that it was the bully, hiring hackers to fend off rivals in the pay-TV market. "The charges stem from 1997 when NDS is accused of cracking the encryption of rival NagraStar, which makes access cards and systems for EchoStar's Dish Network and other pay-TV services. Further, it's alleged NDS then hired hackers to manufacture and distribute counterfeit NagraStar cards to pirates to steal Dish Network's programming for free."

For someone who should be scraping the bottom of the publishing barrel, author and news-article-re-poster James Frey certainly seems to have crawled his way to the top. Over Nan Talese's body.

Not only has his "switch" to fiction – one rumor we continue to hear from publishing insiders is James always imagined himself a novelist, but publishers knew they could better market a memoir, so he, stupidly, made the jump – been nicely swept under the rug (with A Million Little Pieces continuing to move copies), but his new effort, Bright Shiny Morning, on bookshelves May 13, is being feted with a May 8 Sotheby's party with a limited edition of the novel, in collaboration with photogs Terry Richardson and Richard Prince, to be released. He'll then head off to Anaheim to speak at the American Library Association convention.

Having ditched Random House imprint Double Day, Frey is now at HarperColilns. Which might explain why today's Page Six carries the flattering news; HarperCollins, like the Post, is owned by News Corp. That, and former MSNBC programming whiz Davidson Goldin, who is counseling Frey on all things media relations, appears to be damn good at his job.

In case the paparazzization of the Associated Press didn't have you worried about one of the world's most ubiquitous news services, perhaps its new hires will. Sam Zell and Rupert Murdoch are both joining the AP's board, it was announced today at a meeting where chairman William Dean Singleton mixed up "Osama" with "Obama."

The duo have been elected to three year terms, which is more than enough time for Rupert to BlackBerry Messenger Sam underneath the board room table with tips about how to swindle David Geffen into buying the Los Angeles Times.

That, or to chuckle about the New York Press' Wall Street Journal parody.

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Are we reading this correctly? The New York Post's Page Six is calling out CNBC's Erin Burnett for being a China-lover, when owner Rupert Murdoch couldn't be described any other way himself? [P6]