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Fuji TV Shuts Down Iron Chef Fansites
The Ass, The Dog And Their Master
A Dog and his Master's Ass, having grown acquainted over the years, had become great friends, though the Ass spent many long hours ploughing the fields, and the Dog mainly lay about with little to do. One day the Dog decided that the work of his friend the Ass was quite remarkable and under-appreciated. Taking a bushel of grain from the year's harvest, he proclaimed to all passers-by: "O, just look upon the work of my friend the Ass! Is it not remarkable!" Some onlookers did make comment on the quality of the grain, whereupon the Ass brayed in delight. Yet upon returning home, the Master found two handfuls of grain missing, and thereupon beat the Dog soundly, chained him up, and warned the Ass never again to countenance thievery.
Moral...
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
-- H. L. Mencken
www.ironchef.com
and some sites not (yet) down:
http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCi ty/1365/ /html/iron_chef.html
http://home.pacbell.net/ogytork
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Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
JMC
Calling this stuff "Intellectual Property" really stretches the meaning of the word intellectual practically beyond all recognition.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Did anybody see the actual cease and decist letter?
"We further demand that the Sounds website and its employees and agents immediately remove from its website all materials copied from the Iron Chef program and place a notice on the Sounds website acknowledging and apologizing for infringing Fuji's intellectual property rights and providing a link to the Television Food Network site regarding "Iron Chef" at: www.foodtv.com/tvshows/ironchefindex."
Does this sound incredibly petty to anybody? Removing the infringing material is one thing but an apology and a required link? They have no right to demand that.
Actually, considering this contemptuous move on their part, I think they should never be allowed to have the domains. Put up a computer news or porn site there instead. Unless the Iron Chef TV show happens to be porn, an ironchef.com porn site would not really be a trademark violation, since no one could possibly confuse the two. (Just as you can have a copper mine or a computer consulting firm or a real estate company called "McDonalds" without infringing on the trademark of the company that sells tasteless lumps of grease under that name.)
That isn't to say they won't be able to hijack the domain anyway, but at least they wouldn't be able to use "trademark" argument without lying.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Once upon a time, I made a fansite about a different TV show. The only copyrighted material I used was one picture of the main character (fair use 3) for non-commercial (fair use 1) purposes. I even linked to the official site (fair use 4).
The copyright owners sent me a cease and desist letter. I took the image down within half an hour of checking my mail. I would later study the issue in more depth and discover that fair use is not infringement; cease and desist letters against obvious fair use can constitute harassment.
So I asked for a license. They refused to give me one, claiming a possibility of defamation aka libel. Then I just took the site down and put a rant in its place.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm at work, else I'd try to dig up a working link from my bookmarks...the FoodTV site is sucky and bland (of course) but at least it gives you an idea.
The deal is, you have this rich, foppish man (Chairman Kaga) who (so the story goes) spent his fortune to find amazing new cuisines. To do this, he built a giant kitchen, called Kitchen Stadium, and found four cooks who are the masters of their particular cuisines - one a Japanese chef, one a French chef, one a Italian chef, and one a Chinese chef.
The show itself consists of a challenger (usually top chefs from top hotels or restaurants), whose background is described in detail by Kaga before the show, coming to Kitchen Stadium and picking one of the Iron Chefs to "battle." There is a "theme ingredient" for each show - some of them are mundane (tofu) and some of them are relatively exotic (mangoes!), and both chefs have to create a meal (usually consisting of four to six dishes) that best utilize and showcase this theme ingredient within an hour. While they cook, the panel of four people (two people who are always on the show, then two celebrities, including one AMAZINGLY ditzy actress) make comments and talk about what's going on. Finally, the two celebrities and two other guests taste the food that the challenger and the Iron Chef have made in the hour, and judge accordingly.
It sounds so weird to describe it, and I know I have dissolved in laughter when I'm trying to tell someone about it more than once. The charm of it is that it's very serious, but it doesn't seem like it should be. Also, it's very exotic and just plain fun to watch. So check it out sometime!
I used to work for a licensing company. Their business is to sell the rights for other companies to be able to use images, likenesses, etc. of trademarks they represent. The licensing company also dictates where and when these likenesses are used and in what context. If anyone subverts that, no matter how pure and non-commercial the intent, it is still undermining the very business of licensing and is in violation of their trademark.
If some schmo from Missouri decides to put Sn**py on his church's website and doesn't have to pay for it, MetLife will suddenly say to the licensing company, "Hey, why the frickin' crap am I paying for these Sn**py rights when this schmo from MO gets it for free?! I'm paying half from now on or I don't renew the contract and you get NOHTING!" The licensing company says, "WTF?! We didn't sell the rights to use Sn**py on some backwoods church's website, AND EVERYONE IN THE WORLD CAN ACCESS IT. Call the lawyers!"
If you videotape a baseball game and play it on a TV in the middle of a public park, even if for free, that is still a violation. Licensing rights is a business. Subverting that business is illegal, whether the perpetrator is doing it for-profit or not.
There is no free lunch. Most high school and college kids don't understand this because they don't have to support themselves. Yet. Many American adults don't understand this because America is stuffed full of morons who forget that everything manmade on this planet is the result of commerce! People do not give anything away for free unless it is to lure you to spend money on something else. Period.
In Napster's case, it is giving away someone else's stuff, without signing a contract or receiving permission, so they can make money off advertising and Napster merchandise. Nice, huh?
In this case, Iron Chef _could_ grant limited permission to the fansites, but they do not feel they would be able to make the same amount of money they would make from, say, Random House or Hallmark and they would not be able to exert full control over the use of the trademarks, which they feel they must be able to do. Remember, we're talking millions of dollars for rights, not 'Oh, I could pay you a hundred bucks to use Sn**py, right?' Millions. Each. Time.
That said, I think that Parker and Stone had the right idea when they pleaded with Comedy Central NOT to go after all the South Park sites, instead letting the 'net buzz help the property overall with the occasional 'no, you've gone too far now take that down please' but I'll bet the licensing people were livid about that. They lose money, and you know how people are when they feel like they are being robbed.
But the damage is done. Enthusiasms are punished. The work that people do to express their fondness for something gets reduced to naught. (How come so many defenders of the right of IP owners to 'make money from their work' never consider the value of the work of those 'downstream' from them?)
This, to me, is one of the most subtle, yet most festering injustices of current times. In the years after the second world war, European thinkers used to remark that "the Americans have colonized our subconscious." (I'm focusing on the phrase "colonizing the subconscious," not the word "American," oh ye pedant who is compelled to tell me that Fuji is a Japanese company). Now, the owners of cultural property are trying to consolidate their conquest and turn it into franchise. The works of pop culture are *part of my subconscious.* I have dreams with Bugs Bunny and Gilligan's Island and Star Trek in it. Compelling images from TV and cinema have been flash-burned into memory. I quote films I've seen to comment on quotidian events with the same fluid ease that, I imagine, the ancient Athenians used to refer to Olympean deities. But the tycoons of culture can and will keep me from expressing the ebb and flow of these cultural elements, just to protect their profits. All in all, it's a more egregious slight on the liberty of the human spirit than most people will care to admit. It has to be stopped.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I can understand complaining about the use of copyrighted images or sounds, etc., but think about it a little bit - as of recently, the amount of lawsuits raised against personal, non-profit websites (or other actions taken against them) has skyrocketed. What possible BENEFIT could come from spending your time and money to stop a free website from spreading your glory and bringing your name to the forefront of surfer's minds, without charging a dime for advertising?
Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but if someone were to tell other people what a nice guy I was, I wouldn't beat the hell out of him for talking about me without my express permission.
"I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"
This one is a hard choice for me. On the one side, Iron Chef certainly has the copyrights to its logo, images, and sounds from its show. And it probably has the right to go after people who they feel have violated that copyright. After all, if they don't reign in people now, what's to stop someone else from making Iron Porn or something that comes back to bite them in the butt?
Now, that having been said, Fuji should take a careful look as to what site is doing what. If the site is positive and promotes traffic, I'd give them a letter saying "Hey, that's our stuff - but you can use it all if you sign this agreement saying that it's all ours, and that you won't claim its yours, and give us a link to our site on each page in a nice viewable manner." This way they maintain control of the copyright (by forcing people to have Fuji's permission, a perfectly reasonable request IMHO), and if a site doesn't agree, then they can slap them down. As always, that's just my $0.02. I could be wrong.
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel
We don't just like games, we love them!
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
The theme ingredient for tonite is..........
......A cease and desist order!
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
Honestly, that has to be one of the most ignorant PR moves of the year.
So long as the fan sites aren't using the images, sound clips, etc. to blast the show then isn't this basically free advertising on the 'net for Iron Chefs? Why yes Bob, I believe that it is. So, instead of rejoicing that viewers thought so much of the show that they were willing to dedicate hours of work to honor it, Fuji TV decides that having loyal fans is a Bad Thing (TM). I think that their ratings are about to go South.
~CalibanDNS