Regulation of fan web pages -- Star Wars , Trek, Simpsons, etc...

[Harry Jay Knowles]

Found this, it might be of interest.

Movies Ready Internet Assault

(December 5, 12:07 pm)

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Two and a half years ago, Jason Ruspini, a
self-proclaimed
"member of the Star Wars generation," paid his beloved saga the ultimate
high-technology tribute: He designed and posted a Star Wars Web site.

Fans loved the page; Lucasfilm, which owns the rights to "Star Wars,"
did not. With
devotees dropping in at a rate of up to 40,000 per day, Lucasfilm made a
discreet phone
call to the University of Pennsylvania student.

"They nicely asked me to shut it down, with the implication that if I
didn't they would
bring in a lawyer or something," said Ruspini, now 21. "It was a total
surprise."

What happened next, though, apparently came as a total surprise to
Lucasfilm, the San
Rafael, Calif.-based company owned by "Star Wars" creator George Lucas.

Lucasfilm was about to learn the hard way what the rest of Hollywood is
just beginning
to understand: that ownership on the Web may be one of the prickliest
problems facing
copyright law since the codes were written years ago.

Ruspini posted excerpts on the Web site of his conversation with a
Lucasfilm executive.
Outraged "Star Wars" devotees vented their furor on Lucasfilm. Ruspini
says they
flooded the company with angry e-mails, demanding to know how it could
presume to
assert such totalitarian control over a product some fans had woven into
the very fabric
of their lives.

Four months after the January 1996 phone call to Ruspini, Lucasfilm
backed down. In a
letter posted on Ruspini's Web site, the company apologized for apparent
"miscommunication" and vowed to develop a Web policy soon.

"Technology is advancing fast enough to worry about copyrights of film
now," said John
Raffetto, a spokesman for the Creative Incentive Coalition, a
Washington, D.C.,
lobbying group representing the movie industry.

Hollywood is in a dither over the possibility that its greatest asset -
motion pictures - is
easily available, for free, to anyone with a sufficiently powerful
computer and an Internet
account.

Industry executives say current copyright law cannot protect them from
rampant piracy -
they need precision-sharp technologies and enhanced legislation to block
limitless video
reproduction in cyberspace.

This call to action has incited its share of controversy; as the
industry pushes for
legislative changes on Capitol Hill, it's run up against law professors,
librarians and movie
fans who call the new copyright proposals a covert grab for control of
now-public
information.

"It really violates the entire nature of the copyright law," said Karen
Coyle, a library
automation specialist with the University of California, and a member of
Computer
Professionals for Social Responsibility. "(The law) wasn't intended to
restrict access. The
idea was if people had control (over the science and arts they produced)
they would
want to publish their information. It is not intended to restrict."

But the studios say they are genuinely concerned about the future.

"The Internet is an amazing phenomenon that creates opportunities and
issues to which
we are all responding," said Richard Glosser, the vice president of
interactive
programming at Sony Pictures. "We'll do what we can to protect
ourselves. We'll do our
best."

The industry is fighting back on two fronts, the hi-tech and the
legislative.

In the technology field, movie-makers - concerned that one day soon
computer users will
be able to easily download and view entire videos - are actively
encouraging the
development of protection devices.

In one scenario, distributors would make movies available via the
Internet for a fee, but
rig the system so that each downloaded film could not be copied and used
by someone
else's computer.

In Washington, entertainment lobbyists are joining forces with their
counterparts in the
music, publishing and software industries to push for updated copyright
laws, specifically
prohibiting piracy in cyberspace and slapping offenders with up to
$250,000 in fines, and
five years in jail.

"I think a lot of people right now believe anything on the Internet is
free and up for
grabs," Raffetto said. "(People seem to think) if you can get it on the
Internet, you're free
of copyright law."

Ruspini, the "Star Wars" Web site creator, was not one of those people.
He knew that
even current copyright law gives intellectual property owners like
Lucasfilm rights on the
Internet. But he went ahead with his site anyway, he says, figuring the
worst they could
do was order him to shut down.

Today, Lucasfilm has no official comment on the debacle, other than the
statement the
company posted last spring in an attempt to staunch the burgeoning ill
will.

"We are sorry for any confusion that may have emerged from any
miscommunication on
our part," the company wrote in its notice, which called fans "an
important part of our
'Star Wars' family" and included a promise to develop Internet
guidelines.

Different companies are taking various routes towards self-protection on
the Web.

Disney, known for zealously guarding its trademarked property, appears
to have
adopted a laissez-faire attitude towards Web replication, permitting
even such extensive
copying as "Christy's Disney Images Page" with its sketches of
everything from Aladdin
to Winnie the Pooh. The studio itself refused to comment.

Conversely, Paramount has cracked down on "The Unofficial Brady Bunch
Page,"
demanding the creator remove some images and sound clips, and on
numerous Star Trek
fans for printing synopses of the plot of the just-released, latest
installment in the film
series.

The studios' stern reactions to what are largely fan memorials have left
some Web site
creators complaining publicly. Jeanette Foshee, a fan of the Fox TV show
"The
Simpsons," received a "cease and desist" letter from the network after
executives noticed
her Simpson icons scattered across various Web sites.

"The letter was pretty aggressive and hostile," Foshee, of Boone, Iowa,
wrote in an
e-mail posted on "The Simpsons Archive" Web site. "I was giving them
free publicity.
But I guess this is part and parcel of the way things are done today."

A Fox spokesman, requesting anonymity, responded: "It's not our
intention to shut down
bona fide fan Web sites. It is our intention to insist that all Web
sites meet guidelines that
protect the creative integrity of the programs they represent."

Devotees' wails notwithstanding, the entertainment industry is plunging
ahead into the
murky waters of Internet property. Studio executives and their
Washington lobbyists fret
that if they fail to take a stand in these early days, they may fritter
away their copyright
and wake one day to find they have no stand to take.

"A new magic technology avalanche is about to hit us," said Jack
Valenti, the president
and chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association of
America. "I don't know
where it's going, but before it gets there, there have to be what I call
rules of the
highway."

Because, he continued, "if you can't protect what you own, you don't own
anything."
--
Harry Jay Knowles
Austin, Tx
512-467-8747

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