Man, this latest Michael Moore backstory just keeps getting more angular.

Just when you thought it might be sneaky-cool to BitTorrent a pirated copy of Sicko, be advised that the Weinstein Company producers have hired a tech-savvy top gun named Randy Saaf to slip you something you might not be expecting.

Once again, Advertising Age has the story. Short version: Saaf and his MediaDefender digital minions will trick you into downloading commercial messages instead of the free-for-the-taking movie you thought you were spending all that time and bandwidth streaming onto your hard drive.

So instead of opening the file to see Mr. Moore rant pedantically about his issue du jour, you might suddenly find yourself watching a Coca-Cola commercial. Or a promotional trailer for the movie with a Coke ad tacked onto the end of it. Or something more insidious, perhaps: no regulations govern the range of trojan content allowable in virally-distributed material, which is - by definition - ungovernable.

In other words: caveat ereptor.