O.J. Simpson Tell All May Eventually Appear Online

Earlier this week, we told you how the Fox network in the U.S. had cancelled plans to air a controversial broadcast touting O.J. Simpson’s “here’s how I would have killed my wife and her friend” tell-all tome that was scheduled to hit bookstores this week.

When affiliates balked, the victims’ families roared and outraged viewers complained, C.E.O. Rupert Murdoch stepped in and not only axed the show, but the book, which has also been withdrawn.

Publisher Harper Collins admits hundreds of thousands of editions were on their way to stores, but they’ve all been called back with the promise every one of them will be destroyed.

But in a world where anything rare can bring a small fortune, don’t be surprised if you wind up seeing the special and reading the pages anyway.

Experts note that pirates are a prolific lot – as evidenced by the fact the newly released and heavily secured James Bond film, “Casino Royale” is already being offered illegally over the Internet, where it’s been downloaded more than 200,000 times.
  
So what’s to stop someone from getting the O.J. special that never aired or an errant copy of the book that won’t be sold and posting either on the web? 

Most in the know believe it’s only a matter of time.

“A book becomes collectible when it’s hard to find, and this will become very, very collectible, surely worth four figures,” speculates Richard Davies of AbeBooks.com, which specializes in used and collectible books.

The book itself was sitting in warehouses across the U.S., waiting for distribution to stores. It won’t take much for a few copies to simply disappear. And it’s unknown how many dubs of the TV special exist or who might have access to them.

Which means it may be only a matter of days or weeks before you could be watching O.J. spout off on YouTube or some other file sharing site, despite the cancellations. And excerpts from the book could start appearing online.

In fact, some enterpreneurs on eBay claim to have copies and are offering them up for $65,000 a piece.

“All life is on the record now,” agrees journalism professor Jeff Jarvis. “Anything you can do can get out there and get out there quickly.”

“If I Did It” reportedly contains Simpson commenting on how he thinks the killer of his wife, Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman, committed the gruesome crime. 

In a radio appearance on Wednesday, the man once affectionately known as “The Juice” continued to proclaim he didn’t do it.

“I maintained my innocence from day one, never wavered, and I believe that the evidence proved it,” he made clear.  

He insists the title wasn’t his idea and that he wasn’t confessing to anything. He simply needed the money.

The ex-football star was found not guilty on charges of murdering the pair in 1995, but was later judged liable by a panel of his peers in a civil trial.

The latter decision required a far less onerous burden of proof than the murder proceeding, and the jury came to its judgment fairly quickly in that case.

• O.J.’s former sister-in-law alleges the publisher behind Simpson’s book offered the Brown and Goldman families millions of dollars in  “hush money” to stay quiet about the project. They refused to accept the supposed deal.