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CASEFILE 1996XFOX:
SITE SHUTDOWNS
PREFACE
While this topic is covered on the Fanlore page, I really wanted to bring more coverage to it because I think it is super interesting! This is an event that, to me, really demonstrates how significant the popularity of fansites in the mid-90s was and all the different ways their presence affected the ways we experience and navigate the internet today. Geocities and similar sites have really directly and indirectly impacted so many things about modern social media and such.
That being said, all of this is filtered through the mind of a kid who was right on the cusp of being born in a time without the internet being literally everywhere like it is today. Yes, I do see the slight stupidity in being obsessed with a decade that I was only born five years after. I obviously hold some learned beliefs about the modern internet, and so some of the stuff here that is probably, maybe not a big deal to people who were actually alive in the 90s, seems like a big deal to me.
BACKGROUND
Starting in the mid-90s, Twentieth Century Fox Films and other entertainment corporations began to crack down upon fansites displaying copyrighted materials (images, sounds, and videos) of their properties. Serious threats of legal action were sent, most often in the form of a cease-and-desist letter delivered electronically or through physical mail. Sawada claims that it was generally agreed upon by fans that the Millenium fansite of Gil Trevizo was the first to face the scrutiny of Fox. I’ve found maybe one or two things that claim theirs was the first, but overall it can be inferred that Treviso’s was the first to cause a complete uproar in the fanbase. It seems all of this took place in October of 1996.
“According to Trevizo, Fox had contacted the dean of students and threatened to sue the university if it didn’t “take care of” Treviso’s unofficial Millenium site before the weekend. As one X-Files fan narrates it: Fox immediately took action, freezing his college e-mail account, sending him cease-and-desist letters, and ultimately forcing the shut down of his web page.” - Dangerous Appropriations: Online Fans, Cultural Forms, and Questions of Ownership by Elena Kim Sawada
As demonstrated above, Fox was backed by internet providers, and the letters not only threatened the takedown on the sites in question, but complete cutoff of their internet and e-mail service to fans who did not comply1. Treviso in fact had his email closed and his site was forced to take down most of its content. An example of one of Fox’s cease and desist letters can be seen here.
Unwanting to lose internet access, fans did invariably comply. Though, they did not take it standing down. A multitude of protest sites were created, all encouraging circulation of various graphics displaying a blue banner. It must be noted that these protest sites, while not directly containing copyrighted material, were still at risk of legal threat 2.
According to Sawada, a website does not have to directly reproduce copyrighted material to warrant a legal threat. “Any work that degrades or alters official signifiers may also be considered a breach of the owner’s rights (Sawada, 9).” Many fans adopted copyright disclaimers at the footer of the websites to prevent legal action, but even this did not completely protect the site. All in all, if a corporate power does not agree with or simply dislikes what you are doing on your own website, you were at risk of a legal threat, including losing access to your electronic services all together2.
So, outside of general copyright concerns, why was FOX so motivated to get fansites speaking positively about their own up-and-coming shows off the net? Mainly it was the worry that these extensive fansites would take away from their own official sites, which had gotten a late start in the game, all things considered. Many, many people fought back, arguing that the sites they created were free advertising for their shows, and even that their properties, including their merchandise, would not be half as popular without their presence.
“FOX LAWYERS ARE NAZI BASTARDS” – ’Just somebody else who got shut down’, March 11, 1998
”I had no idea this was going on! I am shocked. Everything on the net only helps to promote The X-Files/ Millenium! People who have websites do so because of how much they love the show. Same with writers of fan fcition! They only want other people to join in their love/excitment for The X-Files. Plus!!!! It is totally non-profit. So why are they doing this??? – LilGreyFox, October 27th, 1996
”X-Philes web sites are not a danger for your supremacy. By spreading sounbites and videos we are actually advertising your products. In fact *YOU* should be paying us for displaying your products on our pages.You are not loosing money on this. You can't sell 20 seconds soundbites, we are not going to publish the pictures we download… Don't you realize that websites are windows which enable you to control what is going on ? Without them you are blind ! You'd better plug your fan because this time THE SHIT IS OUT THERE !!!” – Michele, March 11th, 1998
Additionally, it is inarguable that the fansites provided a much more engaging and less objective view into the content the official websites provided, which is a statement part of a much, much larger conversation about the importance of fandom, etc etc etc. Though, some did fight back against some of the larger pronouncements. As cited in The X-Files, X-Philes, and X-Philia: Internet Fandom As A Site Of Convergence by Amanda Howell, one fan in the newsgroup asserts:
“Guys, before you jump on the 'we must-save-our-right-to-infringe-on-other people's-copyrights-for-fan-purposes' bandwagon, just think about it for a minute. People work long and hard to produce these shows ... so we should be GRATEFUL that we have these shows to watch instead of being UPSET that we can't do whatever the hell we want with images/characters/situations/ whatever relating to them.”
There were also many disagreements on the inarguably childish nature that some people choose to respond to FOX, including nursery rhymes and general hatemail.
”PROTEST THE FOX CLOSING OF THE TREEHOUSE WEBSITE! Send this to all Fox Executives! – I did not write this. Its from the Treehouse guestbook and it was just
TOO good to pass up. E and Snail mail this to all Fox and Xfile execs:
Mine eyes have seen the horror of the killing of fan sites
By a group of psycho lawyers who enjoy stirring up fights
But much to their dismay we will not fade into the night
We Philes go marching on
...continued here
– KirbyCrow, March 11th, 1998
[In response to the above message] “Whoa whoa whoa people. Let's do a little critical thinking here, before we man the ramparts of righteous outrage…Under US law, Fox has a *legal right* to perform this action. Now whether or not it's wise is another story. Now, given all that, it might be wiser to respond to Fox like a bunch of grown ups instead of with something that's the moral equivalent of saying "’I hate you! You're mean and you have cooties!"’ – Phetsy Calderon
[In response to the above message] “Well, that is exactly the level of maturity Fox is displaying.” – Al Ruffinelli, March 11th, 1998
Fourth wall break for a moment here: Jesus, I did not expect the amount of bashing and generally disagreeable interactions on the newsgroup when I was looking through the messages! I once laughed at some of the anti-bullying protests that existed in the fandom, but I now understand…Anyway, I wanted to utilize the very accessible resource that is the alt.tv.x-files newsgroup, in which anyone with a google account can look back at very old conversations. I recommend doing some random searches in there, it’s very fun. Anyway, to further illustrate the reach of this topic, here’s a mini gallery of protest sites.
click here for the gallery
All of this led to the common catch-all term “cease-and-desist” to be propagated around the web “to signify the on-line conflict between corporations and fans3. Additionally, as they were one of the first, possibly the first, to deliver these letters, the phrase “Foxed” became cyberspeak for a website threatened with legal action for copyright infringement 4.
MY THOUGHTS
The lack of more academic or otherwise coverage of these events online surprises me, due to the implications it has for just how much online fandom has changed in the past 25-30 odd years. In my head, I think of this as an early internet issue, meaning Eternal September times, the launch of Geocities times, like 1993-1994…but in actuality, this was a mid to late 1990s phenomenon.
Think of it like this: Back then, random tweenagers and teenagers (and adults, but for the sake of the image, bare with me here) with a love for Bart Simpson or our guy Fox Mulder were getting sent serious cease and desist letters, and even getting their sites completely taken down for copyright infringement. Flash forward to today, 2023, where we have best-seller books that are just fanfiction with the original names command-f changed, and movies of those books, and entire fanbases roaming free with uncredited images and clips and such on every social media platform. Fandom and the impact of fandom is everywhere. Down here in Los Angeles, there’s ads for Webtoon on city buses and gigantic billboards using terminology popularized by the X-Files fanbase in the 1990s.
Think of Pinterest! That’s the whole statement, think of Pinterest! The ultimate scum of the earth when it comes to uncredited images online. And of Redbubble! The amount of money people make off of other people’s likenesses and assumed intellectual property and corporations content would send whatever Fox executive who sent off these letters into a frenzy! (And that's the thing: In most cases, these people targeted by Fox weren’t attempting to make any sort of profit! Yes, some people in the fanbase had sponsorships from various merch sites, but for the most part, these sites were created out of an urge to share their love of Foxes own properties with the people of the web! Free advertising for them, in a way. Free advertising for a company that was still struggling to make a name for itself, starting out in terms of television…And yet.)
It’s not like our internet is now a copyright-free wasteland. I see things suddenly taken down from Youtube and other videographic platforms each day. (Though, the current state of Twitter (January 2023) is excluded from this argument due to extraneous circumstances…I saw someone upload an entire episode of Succession and it stayed up for about two days.) I just mean to say everything seems to be much less serious, a lot more lenient, except for the extreme cases you may hear.
But for an average person posting content for their favorite show on the internet, it’s rare that you would have to worry about legal action for posting a clip of your favorite scene, or in this case, simply images of a copyrighted character. Think of the amount of accounts online that do exactly that! Furthermore, the amount of people with copyrighted characters as their profile photo! The most you have to worry about is the video at the least getting taken down for copyright, but the act of a cease and desist letter showing up on your door or in your inbox is unheard of under these circumstances.
1. [Dangerous Appropriations: Online Fans, Cultural Forms, and Questions of Ownership by Elena Kim Sawada, Page 8]↩
2. [Dangerous Appropriations: Online Fans, Cultural Forms, and Questions of Ownership by Elena Kim Sawada, Page 9]↩
3. [Dangerous Appropriations: Online Fans, Cultural Forms, and Questions of Ownership by Elena Kim Sawada, Page 8]↩
4. [Blue’s News, November 26, 1997]↩