accused of plagiarism. In 2001 the Italian progressive newspaper La Repubblica noticed the similarities between Luttazzi TV show Barracuda and the David Letterman Show. Luttazzi replied that the actual model of David Letterman is, in turn, Johnny Carson's Tonight Show and stated that all jokes and texts were original. In 2007, Christian Rocca, a journalist from "Il Foglio" (a conservative newspaper controlled by Silvio Berlusconi's family) accused Luttazzi of plagiarizing jokes from American comedians; and in 2010 several Italian newspapers reported of anonymous bloggers accusing him of having plagiarised many jokes from comedians such as George Carlin, Mitch Hedberg, Eddie Izzard, Chris Rock, Bill Hicks and Robert Schimmel. The accusation of plagiarism, according to Luttazzi, is a misleading half-truth. Five years before those allegations, Luttazzi himself told about his scheme on his personal blog: he wrote that he adds famous comedians' material to his work as a defense against the million-euro lawsuits he has to face because of his satire. Luttazzi calls his ruse "the Lenny Bruce trick" after a similar trick played by his hero, Lenny Bruce. Luttazzi asks his readers to find out the original jokes. He awards a prize to anyone who finds a "nugget", i.e. a reference to famous jokes: he calls the game "treasure hunt". Luttazzi also calls the allegations "naive", explaining why those jokes are not "plagiarized", but "calqued", which is a fair use of original material. He used a joke by Emo Philips to prove that the meaning of a joke depends on its context. Luttazzi's blog lists all the comedians and writers quoted in his works. In 2012, Luttazzi won the first step of a legal battle against La7 broadcasting company, which in 2007 abruptly closed his late show "Decameron", accusing him, among other charges, of plagiarism from Bill Hicks. La7 was sentenced to pay 1,200,000 Euros as compensation. In 2014, an academic paper explained why Luttazzi's jokes are his own and not "plagiarised" ones. Reactions In 2010, a few commentators, after the first batch of news which did not mention Luttazzi's 2005 post in his blog about the "Lenny Bruce trick", said Luttazzi did what web aggregators do. Others, such as Wu Ming, pointed out that as a result, many former fans were turning into angered detractors of Luttazzi, with the risk of denying Luttazzi's original artistic and cultural contributions and deep renovation of Italian satire. In Luttazzi's defense, film director