FOX SHUTS DOWN WWW X-FILES SITES
Michelle Morrison
I WROTE! I think everyone should. If you do, be nice. :0)
Michelle
alby...@aol.com
In article <333A81...@interpath.net>, J <fer...@interpath.net> writes:
>In an action sure to rate them high on the stupidity scale, FOX is
>shutting down personal X-Files sites on the net. Watch out; yours will
>be next. I'm moving mine off the company's server ;) and into a
>personal area while I wait for them to shut it down; get what clips and
>pix you want NOW.
>
>This defendant just gave in, but would anybody really have a case here?
>I guess copyright is copyright. If there are any (Non-FOX ;)) lawyers
>here please speak up.
>
>If you don't appreciate FOX killing personal web-sites then go to
>http://www.foxworld.com/mailindx.htm, pick an e-mail address, and tell
>them how you feel. Remind them that personal sites are free advertising
>for their show. Tell them you're not watching FOX anymore! Tell them
>that they're losing viewership with these shenanigans.
>
>This is an AP article about the first defendant:
>
>
D'you think my X-Ville site will be affected?
--
Alby Reid <Alby...@aol.com>
X-Ville's dysfunctional teenager...gotta go electrocute some cows...
Lt. 1st D.A.M.U.
Visit The Official X-Ville homepage at http://members.aol.com/AlbyReid/X-Ville
roge...@msn.com
In article <19970327195...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
alby...@aol.com wrote:
>
> In article <333A81...@interpath.net>, J <fer...@interpath.net> writes:
>
> >In an action sure to rate them high on the stupidity scale, FOX is
> >shutting down personal X-Files sites on the net. Watch out; yours will
> >be next. I'm moving mine off the company's server ;) and into a
> >personal area while I wait for them to shut it down; get what clips and
> >pix you want NOW.
> >
> >This defendant just gave in, but would anybody really have a case here?
> >I guess copyright is copyright. If there are any (Non-FOX ;)) lawyers
> >here please speak up.
> >
> >If you don't appreciate FOX killing personal web-sites then go to
> >http://www.foxworld.com/mailindx.htm, pick an e-mail address, and tell
> >them how you feel. Remind them that personal sites are free advertising
> >for their show. Tell them you're not watching FOX anymore! Tell them
> >that they're losing viewership with these shenanigans.
> >
> >This is an AP article about the first defendant:
> >
> >
>
Hell, will any fan-fiction pages be affected?
see u,
Lady Myr
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
J
In an action sure to rate them high on the stupidity scale, FOX is
shutting down personal X-Files sites on the net. Watch out; yours will
be next. I'm moving mine off the company's server ;) and into a
personal area while I wait for them to shut it down; get what clips and
pix you want NOW.
This defendant just gave in, but would anybody really have a case here?
I guess copyright is copyright. If there are any (Non-FOX ;)) lawyers
here please speak up.
If you don't appreciate FOX killing personal web-sites then go to
http://www.foxworld.com/mailindx.htm, pick an e-mail address, and tell
them how you feel. Remind them that personal sites are free advertising
for their show. Tell them you're not watching FOX anymore! Tell them
that they're losing viewership with these shenanigans.
This is an AP article about the first defendant:
- Fox lawyers shut down area student's `X-Files' site
-
- By DAVID BORAKS
- Columnist
-
- One of the exciting innovations of the World Wide Web is how it lets
- anyone be a publisher, sharing ideas, interests and opinions with a
- potentially large audience.
-
- Those who support free-speech in cyberspace -- including me -- often
- point to this when arguing against government restrictions on the
- Internet.
-
- But publishers -- whether multinational media conglomerates or
- hobbyists with their own World Wide Web pages -- have certain
- responsibilities. And sometimes, freedom of speech is not so clear
- cut, especially if it clashes with another value we Americans share:
- intellectual property rights.
-
- That lesson hit home earlier this month for Dan St. Clair, a
- 17-year-old Harrisburg resident and novice Web publisher who until
two
- weeks ago ran a personal Web site devoted to Fox TV's popular
- science-fiction show ``The X-Files.''
-
- St. Clair's site -- one of thousands of Internet ``fan sites''
- celebrating TV shows, entertainers or other celebrities -- carried
- images of the ``X-Files'' stars and audio clips of memorable lines
- recorded from the weekly show.
-
- He removed the site after receiving a certified letter from lawyers
- for the show's owner, Twentieth Century Fox film studios.
-
- If St. Clair had merely handed out a few photocopies of the stars'
- photographs to his fellow fans, or passed around an audio cassette
or
- two, he might have gone unnoticed. But the very medium that allows
- anyone to be a publisher also makes it easier for potential
copyright
- violations to be caught.
-
- Fox's legal responsibility
-
- Dennis Wilson, a lawyer for the Los Angeles firm of Baker &
Hostetler,
- wrote in his letter that the firm's ``Internet monitoring program''
- discovered St. Clair's ``X-Files'' site.
-
- ``Fox has dedicated tremendous time and resources to create quality
- entertainment programming such as `The X-Files,' '' Wilson wrote.
- ``However, the development and distribution of Fox's programs
require
- a collaboration with many different entities, including guild
- organizations representing the actors, directors and writers, as
well
- as local, national and international television and cable stations.
.
- . . Fox has a legal responsibility, including many contractual
- obligations, to prevent the unauthorized distribution of its program
- material.''
-
- The letter asked St. Clair to remove the audio clips and images and
- said, ``If you do not remove these properties, we may be forced to
- take legal action to have them removed.''
-
- That was enough for St. Clair and his parents, Don and Carolyn St.
- Clair.
-
- Although Dan St. Clair isn't sure he did anything wrong, and said he
- hasn't made any money from the site, he closed it because ``I didn't
- want them to sue me or anything.''
-
- No money in it
-
- St. Clair created the site more than a year ago after he began
- exchanging ``X-Files'' sound clips and pictures with others in the
- alt.binaries.x-files Usenet group, a sort of e-mail gathering place
- for the show's fans.
-
- ``I would go to the newsgroup and there were always people posting
- sound clips there, so I was posting them there, too, along with
- everybody else. I thought, I'm getting tired of posting these every
- week. Why don't I post them on a Web site,'' he said. ``I didn't see
- anything wrong with it.''
-
- When Fox and its lawyers began shutting down fan sites devoted to
- another television program, ``Millennium,'' St. Clair and his mother
- discussed the possibility that his site might also be targeted.
-
- But, said St. Clair, ``I never thought it was a real possibility
- because there are a lot of 'X-Files' Web sites that are a lot more
- popular than mine. We were all a little surprised.''
-
- Carolyn St. Clair, who is Dan's home-school teacher, is sorry the
site
- had to come down.
-
- ``He didn't sell the pictures or make any money off his site. . . .
- (But) I guess I wasn't that surprised. I was disappointed for my son
- because he takes pride in his work,'' she said.
-
- Although St. Clair won't be publishing much about ``The X-Files'' in
- the near future, he'll continue to be busy on the Internet. He also
- has another fan site, this one devoted to actress Sandra Bullock, as
- well as a site called the ``Lime Ribbon Campaign'' that opposes use
of
- terms such as ``geek'' and ``nerd'' to describe Internet users. And
- he's also the owner of a fledgling Web design business called Danco
- Publishing (www.dancopublishing.com), which he runs out of his home.
-
- To read the letter St. Clair received from Fox's lawyers, go to
- http://www.dancopublishing.com/x-files/letter.htm.
-
--
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
| J. Ferrell - Carolina Area Storm Investigators |
| fer...@interpath.net http://www.weatherwatchers.org/j/ |
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Maren
Cease and desist form letters are being sent to loads of websites.
Pictures are allowed if there are diclaimers. However, sounds and video
clips are forbidden. www.prograde.com/XFiles (I think that's the
address, I'm not sure) was sent a letter by the counsels of 20th Century
Fox, telling the owner of the website that legal action would be used
against them if they did not shut down. It was a form letter because it
talked about pictures, and that site had no images at all, only sounds.
So, I'm assuming that other sites are being shut down. I really see no
problem with free distribution--no one's making any money off of it, and
20th Century Fox isn't losing any money, because the company, itself, is
not selling individual sounds or images.
Anyone else find it suspicious that these shut downs come directly after
Pendrell's death? Is Carter testing our loyalty, or our obsession? Is
he trying to drive us away?
Maren
Gil Trevizo
roge...@msn.com wrote:
>Hell, will any fan-fiction pages be affected?
Doubtful as we've basically stopped them on the images front, which is
all most fanfic sites have -- no audio or video on those. But if you
give these folks an inch....
Gil
Usually Ben Turner
Maren <barn...@erols.com> wrote:
> Cease and desist form letters are being sent to loads of websites.
> Pictures are allowed if there are diclaimers. However, sounds and video
> clips are forbidden.
Big companies can kiss my ass. I have an X-Files site, which is
basically just a description of the show for newbies. All it has is
images.
But, look, these X-Files sites on the Web are free marketing for Fox.
We don't make money off our web sites (in fact, we lose money -- I pay
$20 a month, plus Internic domain name fees to provide free content
and to combat commercial mindsuck sites). We attract new viewers to
the show and we help new viewers appreciate the show more. The
X-Files page on my site is one of my more visited pages and it has
helped a lot of people understand the brilliant subtlety of the show.
Looks like they're just giving lawyers something to do while they try
to figure out how to get around the fact that the Internet is nothing
but good for them.
B.
"Sive iubes seu votas, hoc facio."
Ben Turner ( b...@benturner.com )
http://www.benturner.com/
John J Martin (really Ann)
What about the XVille homepage? Will Alby have to go into hiding? (if
she needs to be destroyed, I'll take care of it-- Alby, I TOLD you I'd
get you good.) : )
Ann
Dutch Apple Pie.
My parents tried to shield me--but still I found X-Ville
*X-Ville- we put the FUN back in "Dysfunctional"*
Visit me in X-Ville anytime! Please! I'm lonely...
********************************************
Red light, stop. Green light, go. Yellow light, go
very fast. -Starman
********************************************
If you've seen the movie "The Lighthorsemen"
or you know anything about the actor Jon Blake,
please e-mail me.
Hey, CARY ELWES, too.
I want to believe.
Bill Stuart
I agree with fox, actually.
When you reproduce mass amounts of x-files stuff without
permission, you're diverting money away from the people who make their
living doing it.
If you respect the show, why not respect the people who make the
show? They've worked hard and deserve the royalties from merchandise sales.
--
Truth is stranger than fiction, but rarely as strange as the
hallucinations i have after staying up 18 days in a row drinking nothing
but jolt and watching nothing but Xena.
mma...@biomed.med.yale.edu
On 29 Mar 1997, Bill Stuart wrote:
> I agree with fox, actually.
>
> When you reproduce mass amounts of x-files stuff without
> permission, you're diverting money away from the people who make their
> living doing it.
Would you care to explain how a non-profit website diverts money away from
1013 Productions (or whomever owns the copyright)? Websites are like
bootleg recordings; they only fuel the fan's desire for high-quality,
legitimate stuff. The *real* issue isn't so much about money as it is
about *control* - the companies want complete control over their
images/sounds (despite the fact that they provide it free of charge to
millions of people and could never hope to gain the amount of control that
they crave).
Maeg
mma...@biomed.med.yale.edu
Playboy, like MTV, perceives of itself as a media emperor, but with even
fewer clothes. - suck (www.suck.com) 24 March 1997
Sarah Stegall
>So, I'm assuming that other sites are being shut down. I really see no
>problem with free distribution--no one's making any money off of it, and
>20th Century Fox isn't losing any money, because the company, itself, is
>not selling individual sounds or images.
They may be losing LOTS of money. When actors sign contracts with
production companies, often the contracts include clauses that give the
actors royalties ANY TIME THEIR CHARACTER APPEARS IN A PUBLIC FORUM,
especially one to which people must pay to have access. Maybe all you
students out there get the Net for free, but a lot of us are paying for
it, so that makes us, in a sense a paying audience. Actors live and die
by royalties, so don't expect the Screen Actors Guild to start making
exceptions for royalty clauses just because the Net is new technology.
Royalty clauses like these are one reason, for example, that entire
episodes of The X-Files are not shown at official conventions (also, the
network doesn't want to mess up its syndication rights down the road by
displaying to a paying public any episode they intend to sell later).
Imagine, if you will, the cost to Fox should David Duchovny's agent and
lawyers insist on getting paid EVERY SINGLE TIME someone downloaded a
picture of Mulder from a website!
>Anyone else find it suspicious that these shut downs come directly after
>Pendrell's death? Is Carter testing our loyalty, or our obsession? Is
>he trying to drive us away?
Is this a serious question?
****************************************************************
Sarah Stegall*http://www.munchkyn.com/*munc...@netcom.com
I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather,
not screaming in terror like his passengers...
****************************************************************
David R. Hanna
Heres a copy of the letter i received from FOX regarding web sites:
A STATEMENT FROM FOX REGARDING FAN WEBSITES
In response to erroneous rumors circulating on some internet
websites, Fox wishes to assure fans of "THE X-FILES", "MILLENNIUM" and
"THE SIMPSONS" that it is not Fox's intention to shut down bona fide
websites created by fans devoted to these programs.
However, Fox must require all websites using copyrighted and
trademarked materials to comply with guidelines that protect the
creative integrity of the programs they represent.
Fox has not asked any websites to be closed except a few which were
using program materials in an inappropriate manner. Some examples of
inappropriate uses we have found include:
(a) using copyrighted photographs, images and sounds which have not
been approved for distribution;
(b) removing Fox's copyright and trademark notices and asserting
ownership by a third party, or asserting that copyrighted and
trademarked materials are in the public domain;
(c) copying or altering text, photographs, images, designs and logos
from official websites without permission or attribution;
(d) copying or altering photographs, images, designs and logos from
programs in a manner that denigrates the programs, the actors or the
characters they portray;
(e) using photographs, images, designs and logos to promote a product
or commercial business or service;
(f) carrying advertising for parties not associated with the
programs; and
(g) offering unlicensed merchandise for sale;
We know true fans do not encourage inappropriate activities and
respect the hard work of the many talented and imaginative people who
make Fox's programs unique. Fox appreciates the support of all fans
in protecting its creative rights and proprietary interests.
Thanks for writing
Behemoth
/\ /\
(o o)
(»,*,«)
'~'
|>*<|
Stef Davies
>
> Fox has not asked any websites to be closed except a few which were
> using program materials in an inappropriate manner. Some examples of
> inappropriate uses we have found include:
>
> (a) using copyrighted photographs, images and sounds which have not
> been approved for distribution;
>
Since FOX - despite it's promises and comments - has yet to approve ANY
photographs, images or sounds for distribution, compliance with the above
would be a tad tricky.
When they actually get their long-promised fan-ftp site up and running THEN
they might have some reason to complain.
Maybe.
Unless its as dull as their web-site.....
Stef
--
____________________________________________________________
stephani...@ukonline.co.uk
OBSSE Novitiate
---------------------------------------------
Post-Episode and Season 4 Fanfic Pages:
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/members/stephanie.davies/seas4.htm
Gossamer UK X-Files Fanfic Archive:
http://we.ukonline.co.uk/xfilesfanficarchive.d/newthisw.htm
____________________________________________________________
Stef Davies
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files
Subject: Re: FOX SHUTS DOWN WWW X-FILES SITES
Organization: At Home...
Cybertron
> On Tue, 1 Apr 1997 06:26:41 GMT, munc...@netcom.com (Sarah Stegall)
> wrote:
>
> >They may be losing LOTS of money. When actors sign contracts with
> >production companies, often the contracts include clauses that give the
> >actors royalties ANY TIME THEIR CHARACTER APPEARS IN A PUBLIC FORUM,
> >especially one to which people must pay to have access. Maybe all you
> >students out there get the Net for free, but a lot of us are paying for
> >it, so that makes us, in a sense a paying audience. Actors live and die
> >by royalties, so don't expect the Screen Actors Guild to start making
> >exceptions for royalty clauses just because the Net is new technology.
>
fan page, even this very newsgroup? This is definitely a public forum,
which people pay to access, and those copyrighted, trademarked
characters definitely appear. Prominently.
I've never heard of actors demanding royalties for the portrayal of
their characters on the Net- has this actually happend?
My feeling is that the Net isn't exactly a public forum in the same way
that, say, a convention or a tv commercial is. It's more like a bunch
of people standing around in a public place, like a mall or a park, and
having a really noisy convoluted conversation. They had to spend money
on gas or bus fare to get to the mall, they might have paid admission to
get into the park, but no-one would suggest that their conversation is
subject to copyright law.
I've always felt that the spirit, if not the letter, of copyright laws
is that the possesor of the copyright owns the right to make money from
the thing that's copyrighted, directly or indirectly. Individual fan
pages that aren't involved in advertising, endorsements, or
merchandising, are for free. The Internet itself isn't free, but when
you get right down to it hardly anything is. I really doubt that there
would be any drop in Internet account subscriptions as a result of fan
pages being shut down.
-Cybertron
Sarah Stegall
> Um, wouldn't this apply to fan fiction as well? And to every single
>fan page, even this very newsgroup? This is definitely a public forum,
>which people pay to access, and those copyrighted, trademarked
>characters definitely appear. Prominently.
Yes, I imagine that it would. However, none of this has been tested in
court. Neither Fox nor the SAG is probably anxious to tie up a lot of
money and time in a long lawsuit to determine the right of it. Would
you? Fox is probably launching a pre-emptive strike, so they can at
least tell SAG's lawyers that they *tried* to get David Duchovny's
pictures off the net but failed. Please note that this is pure
speculation on my part.
>I've never heard of actors demanding royalties for the portrayal of
>their characters on the Net- has this actually happend?
Actors, specifically X-Files actors, have demanded royalties for their
images appearing on T-shirts and the like at conventions. Don't ask me
more than that, since I am not at liberty to tell. I was told this by an
insider at the production company.
>My feeling is that the Net isn't exactly a public forum in the same way
>that, say, a convention or a tv commercial is. It's more like a bunch
But that is your feeling. The courts have yet to decide on these
points. And my experience with the law is that it rarely incorporates
what you or I might call "common sense".
>of people standing around in a public place, like a mall or a park, and
>having a really noisy convoluted conversation. They had to spend money
>on gas or bus fare to get to the mall, they might have paid admission to
>get into the park, but no-one would suggest that their conversation is
>subject to copyright law.
Of course not. No verbal conversation is covered by copyright law. And
we are not having a verbal conversation here. Don't confuse the metaphor
with the reality. You and I are exchanging TEXT with one another, text
that can be downloaded, stored, and printed. Your letters are, quite
possibly, copyrighted from the moment they hit your modem. This is
another area the law has yet to pronounce on. But if the law treats
email like snail mail, then yes, items posted on the Internet will be
considered the intellectual property of their authors.
>I've always felt that the spirit, if not the letter, of copyright laws
>is that the possesor of the copyright owns the right to make money from
>the thing that's copyrighted, directly or indirectly. Individual fan
>pages that aren't involved in advertising, endorsements, or
>merchandising, are for free.
Free what? Free advertising for The X-Files? Well, no one *asked* us to
engage in free advertising for them, did they? They have a right to
determine when and where they shall advertise their property. And the
spirit of the copyright laws is that the copyright owner owns the rights
to his/her/its creation--period. End of sentence. No qualifiers. If
they want to give it away, fine. If they want to restrict its use to TV
and billboards, fine. No one but the copyright holder has the legal
right to say how that property shall be used, regardless of whether money
changes hands or not. This law was meant to PROTECT the copyright
holder, even if the copyright holder is a mega corporation.
The Internet itself isn't free, but when
>you get right down to it hardly anything is. I really doubt that there
>would be any drop in Internet account subscriptions as a result of fan
>pages being shut down.
True, but not exactly to the point. I don't see the correlation. The
posters on this subject don't seem to be worried about a falloff in Net
population, they are trying to keep Fox from shutting down their websites.
mini...@aol.com
In article <334AF7...@nbnet.nb.ca>, "John L. Rose" <jr...@nbnet.nb.ca> writes:
>
>Sarah Stegall wrote:
>>
>> In article <3345FF...@pangea.ca>, Cybertron <kjoh...@pangea.ca>
>wrote:
>[snip]
>> >I've always felt that the spirit, if not the letter, of copyright laws
>> >is that the possesor of the copyright owns the right to make money from
>> >the thing that's copyrighted, directly or indirectly. Individual fan
>> >pages that aren't involved in advertising, endorsements, or
>> >merchandising, are for free.
>>
>> Free what? Free advertising for The X-Files? Well, no one *asked* us to
>> engage in free advertising for them, did they? They have a right to
>> determine when and where they shall advertise their property.
>[snip]
>
>I read "for free" to mean that there is no charge for public access to
>the fan pages.
>
>> And the
>> spirit of the copyright laws is that the copyright owner owns the rights
>> to his/her/its creation--period. End of sentence. No qualifiers. If
>> they want to give it away, fine. If they want to restrict its use to TV
>> and billboards, fine. No one but the copyright holder has the legal
>> right to say how that property shall be used, regardless of whether money
>> changes hands or not. This law was meant to PROTECT the copyright
>> holder, even if the copyright holder is a mega corporation.
>
>You are right about "regardless of whether money changes hands or not".
>If a potential market is flooded with reproductions of some product that
>is deemed to be the property of some entity, than that entity could
>argue that it's property is being devalued, just as surely as if you
>were to spray-paint graffiti on a house I was trying to sell. In that
>sense, the entity could argue that "the right to make money from the
>thing that's copyrighted" has unfairly been taken away.
>
>There is such a thing as "fair use", I believe it's called, for purposes
>such as critical review, which allows anybody to reproduce limited
>portions of copyrighted material, and it does not require permission of
>the copyright holder. I would think that any portion reproduced (as part
>of a review) would have to have been required to illustrate some point
>raised in the review. Even though (for example) a magazine might be a
>for-profit organization and is publishing a review of some movie or
>book, it is the original material written by the reviewer that is being
>offered, not the material reproduced from the movie or book.
>
>I'd say that your own fine reviews qualify as such. (No, really - I
>don't mean that in a sarcastic way or anything)
>
>I would not consider a mere collection of files in some ftp site to
>qualify, however. There is no context to justify reproducing the
>material. Not even a pretense of a scientific study on "Seasonal
>Variations in the Hair Color of Agentia Scullyensis Danacus".
>
>Original Fan-fic? - that could be trickier to judge. The main characters
>and their names are protected by copyright, no doubt. Then again, what
>about satirical representations, such as on "Saturday Night Live"?
>
>What if the original work being reproduced was a passage from a book
>that contended that, say, "all left-handed people (or some target group)
>eat babies". Supposing that I wanted to bring this outrage to the
>public's attention, do I not have the right to reproduce the
>inflammatory portions? Freedom of the Press has to enter in here
>somewhere. (Unless the Military-Industrial-Entertainment Complex choose
>to prevent it, of course.)
>
>This must be why we have lawyers; to convince others that the fine lines
>should be drawn somewhere other than where they might be, at any given
>time.
*While I firmly believe in the right of Fox, et al., to control exclusively the use of their property*, I wonder if anyone at Fox has considered the advertising value of many of these sites. Fox
could not possibly have afforded to produce the kind of Web presence it now enjoys. I don't think anyone will deny the role of many of these sites in maintaining the popularity (and advertising $
value) of the show. So now Fox wants to close many of these sites--decreasing the media saturation of a mature show with an audience that seems (judging by the comments in this net group)
increasingly disenchanted with the product. I'm no ad biz whiz, but this makes no sense. It would seem a better solution would be to license/endorse Web sites. The licensing process would require
adherence to some artistic/legal standard controlled by Fox. It would also give Fox the opportunity to weed out sites it deems unacceptable.
I just wish they'd spend less on the lawyers and more on improving the product.
Hoping for a new--and *original*-- episode soon.
Regards,