Moore doesn't seem particularly relevant these days, but conservatives sure do hate him. Just look at An American Carol, where Chris Farley's brother plays the cleverly disguised "Michael Malone," who is repeatedly hit in the face and called a "fat, ignorant, traitorous sack of sh*t" by a little girl in the course of 90 minutes of lame comedy that was supposed to thrill the right wing. (Looks like not so much.)

But at least maybe they'll be getting a laugh at Moore's expense.

Moore's latest movie, Slacker Uprising, follows his 2004 tour of college campuses, trying to get young people to vote. But rather than cross his fingers for solid DVD sales, he did something no director has done before: posted it online, for free. The note on his website reads, "You have my blanket permission to share the movie with your friends, to set up screenings in your communities or theaters, to show it on your campuses -- all at no charge," in hopes that it will promote voter turnout for this election too.

So why have lawyers been sending threatening letters to websites that link to torrents of the movie? Turns out, he doesn't actually have the rights to his own film outside of North America, the Weinstein Company does. And they're not quite on board with the whole "free movie" plan. Of course, the internet doesn't (for the most part) pay attention to national boundaries, so it'll be hard to get this back in its bottle.

Threatening legal documents don't jibe with Moore's populist stance, and some people are saying it was his fault -- by using BitTorrent to spread his film, he had to know that it would leak overseas, where he'd be exposing people to threats like these. (Now there's a conspiracy theory for you.)

Anyway, if Moore's point was to get people to see his film, the gamble seems to have paid off. A slightly different version called Captain Mike Across America debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2007, where it bombed (that title couldn't have helped -- Captain Mike?). But since Slacker Uprising hit the web, it's become the number one movie on Amazon's Video on Demand list, and one site hosting it got two million hits in the first three days.

Looks like Moore may have the last laugh after all. It certainly won't be coming from anyone who saw An American Carol.

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