No Future for Freedom

In the olden days, when the Internet was solely the province of a few specialised experts, and it hadn't reached its current all-encompassing size, it was a cheerful place, where money was not the bottom line. Copyright was not an issue. It was acknowledged, sure (and still is)... but it was unheard of for copyright owners to start pursuing web-page owners and designers if they chose to talk about a product on their site.

Part of the reason for this, of course, was that if, say, Star Trek was mentioned on a site, it was usually on a fan site, and was usually positive publicity for the programme. After all, you're hardly going to spend time and effort (and in the days before Microsoft FrontPage or Netscape Communicator it was A LOT of time and effort) building a web page about something you're going to rubbish.

But the times, they are a-changing.

I suppose the highest profile case was when Viacom, which owns Paramount, which owns Star Trek, started pursuing the hundreds of Website owners which dealt with Trekkie subjects, and demanding that they remove any images or copyright material from their site. (Since the words "Star Trek" and "U.S.S. Enterprise" are registered as Trademarks, that meant pretty much everything - you could hardly spend your time building a web page about "the programme with the man with pointy ears" and "the space ship named after a famous aircraft carrier"). The result was bitterness of the part of the fans that the financial wizards at the top of the Hollywood food chain had failed to realise how important support on the Web was for Star Trek.(Having said that, they shouldn't be surprised - it was only after the megabrains at NBC had axed the original series in the sixties that they realised the programme had been pulling in the target demographic they'd wanted all along.... duh!)

The BBC has been particularly vigilant in protecting its intellectual properties. Even web-pages belonging to small children which featured the ubiquitous Teletubbies were hit by lawyers' letters warning them off using any copyrighted material. A site which featured low quality RealAudio copies of the long running radio soap The Archers for the consumption of ex-pat Archers fans unable to pick the programme upthesmelves was shut down in no uncertain way by the suits from the Corporation.

Strangely enough, though, it's only recently that broadcasters have twigged that someone's apparently making a lot of money from their primary activity - which is, of course, broadcasting rather than marketing.

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