Slashdot Mirror
Discovery Threatens Fan Site It Also Promotes
An anonymous reader writes "It seems the lawyers and the marketing people at The Discovery Channel don't talk to each other much. The marketing people behind the show 'The Deadliest Catch' have been supporting a fan community called DeadliestCatchTV.com for a while now. They've regularly sent the site info, free clips, previews and information about the show. On top of that, they link to it from the official site, including it in a list of 'fan sites' as a part of the 'Discovery Network,' and even will frame the site with the show's own dashboard for those who click through. Discovery's lawyers, on the other hand, have threatened to sue the site out of existence and have demanded that the owner hand over the domain name — which he is going to do, because he doesn't have the money to fight this. While there may be a trademark issue (which could be easily resolved with a free license), the lawyers are also making the ridiculous argument that posting the videos Discovery sent him to post are copyright infringement. They're also claiming that embedding the official Discovery Channel YouTube videos (which have embedding turned on) is copyright infringement. This is exactly how you turn lots of fans into people who hate your entire channel."
The whole last season was a tour de force of human tragedy, which Discovery happily played to/exploited (even adding in a melodramatic classical score this time around). Aside from the hundred or so tribute episodes to Phil Harris, it seemed like everyone in the fleet was intentionally playing to the cameras this time out even more than usual (with Edgar threatening to leave and fighting with Sig, Jake Harris's sudden "addiction" problems, etc.). Granted, the show will never be as good as the first season (before Alaska changed the rules and made the crab fishing a lot less exciting/dangerous), but this one seemed like a swan song more than any other season in the past.
Everyone involved in the show has always been about the money. The Hanson brothers in particular will do about anything for a buck, and have been known for trading on their fame by lending their names to some pretty sleazy ventures. But this season the cynicism (in particular the playing to the cameras) really showed in some nasty ways. This time the captains even whored themselves for Geico commercials that ran during the show. And the producers' constant cutaways to a tired-looking Phil Harris was particularly shameless (they all but put up "He's about to die" subtitles).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Ain't it fun? You can ruin almost anything with it.
Each department is doing it's job well. Upper management is responsible for overseeing and coordinating departments into a cohesive whole.
Guess who failed?
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
1) Looks like they're "discovering" how to piss of their fans
2) This is what you get by obsessing over a show as pointless as "Deadliest Catch". Oh wait, this one is not a joke. This is karma.
Isn't this the type of thing that the EFF is for?
Seems like setting a precedent for "if you send somebody your copyrighted material, you can't be sued" would be useful, especially with respect to RIAA honeypots.
Can't he just fill the site with porn and get the site blocked by most internet nanny software?
A judge with a brain won't let it fly that one side of the company supports the site and the other side of the company wants to sue it out of existence. They SHOULD find that once Discovery started 'supporting' the website, they gave it 'permission' for it to exist and didn't have a problem with it until they decided to sue. A company, in the eyes of the law, is one entity.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Relax folks, this is all just promotional groundwork for Discovery Channel's next big reality TV show, in which a few thousand lawyers will be released onto a remote, arctic island with no survival gear beyond an iPhone, some designer shoes, and a briefcase full of legal documents and moist towelettes.
The project has tentatively been titled "If you live, you get to sue our asses for putting you there."
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.
--Gordon Gekko, speaking the Mantra of unbridled capitalism. Greed may not get the outright worship it got when Wall Street came out, but many still consider greed to be a positive thing.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It's quite, simple really. There is the legal department, in charge of chasing people away. And then there's the marketing department, in charge of pulling people in. And then there's no communication between them. With opposite missions, what do you expect.
Add to the fact that the legal seems to be adept at the chasing away part, while somewhat forgetful of the law they apparently learned many moons ago in, uhhhunh whatwuzitcalled college methinks? To the lawyers: don't party so hard when in college, or you'll have trouble understanding the law later.
Does anyone do performance review on corporate legal teams? As in real reviews where any monetary awards to the company are balanced with lost goodwill and whatnot? There's a lawyer or two waiting to be fired here, methinks.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
And contrary to popular belief, you don't need a lawyer to be successful at it (remember, I've sued the government - and won).
This is just another case of "lawyers don't know their job" - the majority of lawyers are incompetent. Law school doesn't even teach them how to handle a court case (read any big-name lawyer's bio and they'll tell you as much).
Find a similar motion on the net, admit you own the aforenamed website and deny every other claim. Then the ball is in their court. They can do NOTHING without your cooperation. They will lose the domain name resolution process because you can show that the past history - otherwise they'd have used it
And they'll lose in court. And have to pay.
Let them sue. You'll enjoy making (greater) fools of them.
I'd like to see a cast of nothing but attorneys go all "Lord of the Flies" on each other. Or maybe a lawyer could stand in for Buster on Mystbusters. Or Mike Rowe could make them clean up some kind of poo.
Our entire economy is built around earning what you want by pleasing your fellow man. That is what keeps us all productive.
What the hell is wrong with wanting money? You need it to buy food and medicine for your kids, to put a roof over your head, and to do just about anything interesting. What's so damn bad about artists etc. working because they are paid?
And what is bad about trying to maximize the amount of money you can get in return for what you provide? Haven't you ever asked your boss for a raise? You think people have to work for free and live in poverty in order to be good people?
You are nuts.
The Discovery Channel has really disappointed me. It used to be that they put out good, educational television shows. Now, they've added all kinds of extra drama to shows to supposedly make them more interesting but in reality they have a dumbed down appearance. Now, they also have gone the reality tv route. I fail to see how Deadliest Catch really teaches us anything - it is really only drama. I remember when TLC and DSC really had good educational shows that could captivate thinking audiences without all the bleeped out cursing and melodramatic garbage. It would seem that the last of the truly informative and educational shows are on PBS.
Discovery used to be chock full of good nerd programming that was +1:Informative and +1:Insightful.
Now it's just -1:Overrated and -:notthebest
phone call from the owners of the fan site to the marketing people, followed by a phone call between the marketing people and the lawyers, would result in a free license, an amicable settlement arrangement, Discovery getting a bunch of free advertising, the fans being happy to have a good fan site, and everyone winning.
Except we don't live in that strange, logical place. We live here, where it's all about the almighty dollar and name rights, and the hell with corporate goodwill! Any PR is good PR! Et cetera! Rabble, rabble, rabble!
Disgusting. When will we get wise and finally decide, "Enough is enough." Sometimes I think it's a pity there wasn't an ACTUAL "Year They Hanged The Lawyers..."
"Get the facts first. You can distort them later." -Mark Twain
"But I don't think of you."
I wonder if the fan site has asked the marketing people to intervene. Usually, although lawyers can get lots of money, marketing people HAVE lots of money and that can make a difference to the upper echelons.
Alaskan crab fishing is ok as a "dangerous reality TV" show. Apparently the stats for Alaskan crab fishing is 356/100,000/year. That's a lot - getting on for 1 in every 100,000 per day. (US National Average workforce fatality rate is 7.0/100,000/year.) I wondered if North Sea fishing was worse - it has a vicious reputation and the North Sea has no landmass between it and the north pole. However, statistics indicates that the mortality rate is 151 x national average in the UK, and the UK's national average is 0.5 deaths per 100,000 people. That puts the North Sea fishermen at a paltry 76/100,000/year. Not safe, by any standards, but many times safer in absolute terms. In relative terms, the US' workforce fatality rate is 14x worse than that in the UK, but the Alaskan crab fishing is only 4.7x as deadly as North Sea fishing. By this standard, North Sea fishing is the deadliest fishing occupation relative to the health and safety of the country involved.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
He got it wrong. I guarantee that every C&D written by a lawyer was demanded by an MBA.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Did you ever see a press release or a press map? The ones I have seen do not contain such permission notes, the permission to use the material is implicit.
"They've regularly sent the site info, free clips, previews and information about the show."
Same thing.
The MS lawyers, who clearly hadn't been in the loop until then, demanded the rights to the show. After a baffled silence, the PBS people shot back, 'What the fuck do you mean?' The response to that was, 'Oh, our mistake. We want the rights to the SERIES.' You know. So they could protect MS's image or something.
But no, this doesn't surprise me at all. This guy's basically been set up to be harvested like a ripe tomato-- he puts all of that effort into site design and upkeep, ropes in fans that might otherwise not care for the Discovery website, and delivers them up.
Worse, there's the possibility that this poor bastard is collateral damage from some internal power struggle-- someone in legal trying to be a keener, or a strike at a rival in marketing.
I love my trademarks
I love DMCA
I love to sue fans
I love to make them pay
I love the whole world
And its litigiousness
Boom-de-ah-da
Boom-de-ah-da
Boom-de-ah-da
Boom-de-ah-da!
The Bering Sea gets nasty weather - but you can't produce a full season of TV off that.
Maybe Discovery can't, but The Weather Channel could probably make a series about people who thrive in nasty weather. They could call it something like "Cantore Stories".
Are you denying that most of the gains in GDP have gone to the top 1%? Or do you think that is fair?
It's wiki, but the article on income inequality in the United States is quite well referenced.
As for the idea that raising the tax rate lowers government income, that is only true if we are on the left hand side of the Laffer Curve. And the odd thing is, we are always on the left hand side, according to those in the owning class. No matter how much we lower taxes, lowering them some more will always increase revenue, which is patently ridiculous. Most studies say the Laffer Curve shows that revenue peaks at a top marginal tax rate of 60-70%, far higher than we have today, so, tax away!
And we are not punishing the successful. Nobody makes money on their own, they do it with society's help. Society enables the storage of surplus wealth, an individual can not do that. And it is the cooperation of society that enables the successful to be successful. Society has a say in what rewards its members get, and if we feel that someone's success means that they owe us a little more, well, that is our right as fellow members of society. The successful benefit more from the social contract, obviously, than the poor do, so they should pay their fair share. If they don't like it they are free to search for a better deal elsewhere, or attempt to change things democratically like everyone other citizen.
Meanwhile, I'll be here letting people know that they can vote in their own best interests, not in the interests of the rich.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton