Movie About Notorious Hacker Inspires a Tangle of Suits and Subplots -------------------------------------------------------------------- Marin County author of Mitnick book says he was ripped off by DAN FOST Thursday, May 4, 2000 It was a glitzy party for a cheesy movie. Tina Brown, the editor of Talk magazine, came to San Francisco last week, unveiling for a tech and media crowd the Miramax movie ``Takedown,'' the hyped-up story of notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick and the effort to send him to prison. The reason why the magazine was promoting the movie was never exactly made clear to the 150 or so people sipping wine and munching on asparagus spears, Chinese dumplings and chocolate truffles at the Delancey Street screening room on the Embarcadero. I suppose the folks at Miramax -- a partner in Talk -- were letting the magazine use the flick to promote itself, and to show how cybersavvy it is. But never mind the movie. The really good story is in the fallout the film has engendered. The film is based on a book, also titled ``Takedown,'' that John Markoff, a New York Times reporter and one of Silicon Valley's leading journalists, co-wrote with computer security expert Tsutomu Shimomura, who helped catch Mitnick in 1995. The film stars Russell Wong as Shimomura and Skeet Ulrich as Mitnick. The real Shimomura even has a brief cameo in the film. Marin County author Jonathan Littman, who also wrote a book about Mitnick (``The Fugitive Game,'' published the same day as ``Takedown''), believes that many passages from his book were plugged into the movie. While Markoff and Shimomura received six-figure sums for the rights to their book, Littman hasn't received a cent -- and last month he filed a suit charging Miramax with copyright infringement. Miramax is contesting the suit. Mitnick, who was released from prison earlier this year, says he settled a lawsuit with Miramax in which he claimed the movie defamed him. He wouldn't reveal details of the settlement. Even Markoff, on whose book the movie was based, expressed disdain for what the filmmakers did to the story. ``I thought it was a fundamentally dishonest movie,'' he said the day after the screening, which he attended. ``This is every reporter's nightmare, to see the truth get trampled.'' While Markoff wouldn't pass judgment on the merits of Littman's suit, his comments may have the ironic effect of supporting his onetime-ally-turned-rival. The two talked regularly and met for lunch while they were each following the dramatic story of Mitnick's life underground, but they each gave the other an unflattering portrayal in their books. Markoff's book told the story of Shimomura's pursuit and capture of Mitnick, while Littman's book was based on extensive conversations with Mitnick and was far more sympathetic to the hacker. The movie contains many scenes of Mitnick in his fugitive days, and Markoff admits that neither he nor Shimomura ``knew anything about Kevin's activities except for the two or three weeks that Tsutomu was chasing him. ``Markoff noted that the screenwriters didn't necessarily have to rely on Littman's book; they could have dug for information on their own from some of the voluminous public records in the case. The movie has been shown in France, and plans for American distribution -- whether in theaters or on television -- are unclear. Littman wouldn't comment on the lawsuit, or on anything Mitnick- related; his attorney, Bill Edlund of the San Francisco firm Barko, Zankel, Tarrant & Miller, handled all comments. But the complaint filed in Littman's case, which was e-mailed to me by his public relations firm, makes a compelling argument for copyright infringement. Miramax representatives would not discuss any specific points raised in Littman's suit. The complaint details several scenes from the movie that appear to come directly from Littman's book, including virtually the first 20 minutes of the film. Scenes with eerie similarity include those depicting Mitnick meeting in a strip club with another hacker who is an undercover government agent, Mitnick conning Pac Bell employees into giving him information about security software and Mitnick using that software to eavesdrop on phone calls by FBI agents. A particularly damning comparison involves a page from Littman's book in which he writes that Markoff sensationalized Mitnick's story in a front-page article in the Times. Littman writes, ``There are plenty of allegations, but the only solid charge against Mitnick appears to be a probation violation, generally not the sort of stuff that lands a year- and-a-half-old fugitive case on the front page of the New York Times.'' In the movie, an FBI agent reads that same story, and gripes, ``Even the article says there's no proof. Nothing connects Mitnick to any of these allegations. It's a reporter hyping a story.'' You can bet that in Markoff's book, he didn't accuse himself of hyping the story. ``I learned about the story from an FBI source,'' Markoff said, countering the movie's claim that his article spurred the FBI to investigate Mitnick. (The hype charge has dogged Markoff for years, with hackers and some journalists contending that he puffed up Mitnick's misdeeds and Shimomura's heroics in the Times for the purposes of getting a book and movie deal. Markoff said that he had written about Mitnick since 1981, when he was a reporter at Infoworld, and that he had no way of knowing his articles would become a book when he was writing them.) Littman's complaint also includes e-mails he and Mitnick received from one of the scriptwriters for ``Takedown,'' John Danza. To Littman, he wrote that, ``I'd really like to write a film that doesn't rely so heavily on Tsutomu's book.'' To Mitnick, Danza said he read ``50 pages or so'' of Littman's book, ``and find it much more interesting than Shimomura's book.'' In both e-mails, Danza notes that his attorneys advised him not to read Littman's book for fear of opening him up to copyright violations. Littman is seeking an unspecified sum, and his suit claims that while Markoff and Shimomura received $750,000 for their book rights and $650,000 for the film rights, he received nothing. Markoff said the numbers were wrong, but he added, ``They're not off by an order of magnitude, but I still have my day job.'' Even without the alleged copyright violations, the movie is a deeply flawed telling of the Mitnick story. Some scenes were invented out of whole cloth, including confrontations between Mitnick and Shimomura on the streets of Seattle and in a federal prison. It showed Mitnick hacking into Shimomura's computer, which even Markoff said was unlikely, and it also portrayed Shimomura as admitting wrongdoing in creating anti-hacking tools that ultimately fell into Mitnick's hands. ``It's a very sensationalized and fictionalized depiction,'' Mitnick said in an interview from his home in Thousand Oaks. Mitnick also said the book ``Takedown'' was false and defamatory, although he never sued the authors. He also said Littman's book contained inaccuracies, because he lied to Littman in interviews conducted while he was on the lam. Mitnick, 36, remains on probation until 2003, and he's now fighting his own First Amendment battle. He said his parole officer won't let him speak or write on computer- related topics for money, even though this is his area of expertise. ``The U.S. government is abridging my First Amendment rights,'' he said. ``They don't want me to talk.'' Much of Mitnick's perspective on the case can be gleaned at a Web site, www.kevinmitnick.com, which is maintained by friends of his, because he is not allowed access to the Web or computers of any sort. ECOMPANY -- NOW: It's here. The newest new-economy mag, eCompany Now, has rolled off Time Warner's presses and is on newsstands and in mailboxes, weighing in at 304 pages. Judging by its debut cover, it's trying to make a splash. The photo features 14 Web-savvy businesspeople and a waiter standing waist deep in a swimming pool at L.A.'s Hotel Bel-Air. In case you don't get it, the magazine explains: The pool represents the Internet, and the suits represent business. Let's hope the whole concept isn't all wet. SHAKESPEARE COVERING B2B: After reporting last week that former Upside Editor Adrian Mello's new publication on the business-to-business Internet industry would be called, mysteriously, Line56, I received an e-mail suggesting that it was based on the 56th line of Shakespeare's Hamlet: ``To be, or not to be: that is the question.'' Looking in my Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, I found the famous soliloquy, cited from Act III, Scene 1 . . . Line 56. I guess Mello is entering a new type of journalism: Instead of comforting the afflicted (the last quote that sent me to Bartlett's), he'll either suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them. PUBLICITY STUNT DEPT.: Upside sent out a press release saying it's ``taking over Red Herring'' this week. Can this be for real? Could there finally be a merger among the new-economy mags, with unlikely Upside, the grandaddy of them all, swallowing its own spawn, the Red Herring? Alas, no. What Upside is really doing: Taking over the San Francisco restaurant, Red Herring, for a night, to celebrate a fat May issue. I guess, to use a Silicon Valley phrase, Upside is eating Red Herring's lunch. Or dinner. But, presumably, paying for it. Media Bytes appears every Thursday in The Chronicle. Send buzz, dirt, tips and comments to fostd@sfgate.com. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/05/04/BU71498.DTL This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle