Discovery Channel Forcing Deadliest Catch Fan Site Offline; Claims Embedding Official Videos Infringes

from the not-the-shark-week-people-were-expecting dept

From: DiscoveryChannel

To: Admin

Hi Editors @ DeadliestCatchTV ,



My name is Soumik Pal, I work at Discovery Channel and I'm writing to offer you free preview content and assets from the new season of Deadliest Catch! We feel that the show is a great fit with your site (and especially your readers) and would love to get the word out about some exciting new Catch initiatives this season!



[...]



To get your readers ready for the new season, I've included the official press release, high-quality preview videos, exclusive photography, brief episode descriptions and much more...



[...]



I'm happy to act as your point of contact for any additional requests and we hope your readers might like some of the content we've provided! Please let me know if there's anything more we can provide you with to help get geared up for the new season of Catch.



Thank you!



Soumik Pal

Digital Media, Discovery Channel

Discovery Communications

When I questioned this with Discovery I was told only the employee no longer worked at Discovery and they "were looking in to this". The second lawyer I spoke to from Discovery stated that they had a change of heart and have now decided they wanted to police any sites using their material (Although previously they were providing it for promotion purposes).

The one issue that I really question is that part of the claim made by Discovery was that my "...display of and/or provision of access to unauthorized copies of our client's copyrighted material infringes Discovery's copyrights..." The material in question were actually videos that were posted BY DISCOVERY on YOUTUBE where the embed code was made available for all to use. I spoke to one of the lawyers briefly on the phone today and he understood how this could be confused but maintained that even though the code is there you are NOT ALLOWED TO USE THE EMBED CODE ON ANY WEBSITE.

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John from the soon-to-be-gone-from-the-internet site DeadliestCatchTV.com , alerts us to the news that lawyers from The Discovery Channel are taking down the site . Now, let's get the basics out of the way: the lawyers probably do have a trademark claim here. Certainly from the domain name, you might think it's an official website for the show. The sitehave "not affiliated..." text, but it's hidden all the way at the bottom. If you were trying to avoid a "likelihood of confusion" problem, I would imagine it would help to make itat the top of the page that the site is a fan site and not the official site. That said, there are aof problems with the way Discovery is treating this situation.First of all, in the past, The Discovery Channel, and he's reposted an email he received not so long ago from someone at the Discovery Channel offering him free content and happily celebrating the site. Here's a couple excerpts from the email:That certainly makes it sound like Discovery and the folks involved with the TV showwith the fan site and community that John put together. In fact, that seems like a great way to encourage and nurture a fan site. Actually, the folks behind the show have gone much further. On thefor, the show actually lists & links to fan sites. They even set it up so that if you click on the link, it loads the fan site,the official Deadliest catch "dashboard" (see below). And, as of right now, you can even see a wrapped version of John's site onDiscovery channel page. That certainly looks like a show that wants to support its fan sites:So, again, this is clearly a show that has long supported this site with direct emails, sending them content, encouraging them to share it with other fans of the site,the site from the official site and wrapping the page with its own "Deadliest Catch Network" Dashboard. You would think, at the very least, if the company decided to change its policies, that it would send over a friendly note -- rather than sending a legal nastygram. No such luck.John asked the lawyers who contacted him about Soumik Pal's email:Again, a change of heart is fine -- but sending the lawyers to deliver it with threats? That seems ridiculous. It's a way to turn a bunch of fans into people who will never want to have anything to do withagain. It's a case study in exactly howto deal with social media.Oh, and it gets worse. Beyond the basic trademark threat of the domain name, Discovery's lawyers claimed that John was committing copyright infringement byon his website. I'm not kidding. The Discovery Channel has an official YouTube channel , where it uploads videos and has embedding turned on. So, not surprisingly, John has embedded some of these official clips on his site. I'm about to do the same. This is the last video that John posted:It's from the official Discovery Channel YouTube feed, and embedding is turned on. But... according to Discovery's lawyers, this is copyright infringement. John asked the lawyer about this, and the guy insisted that while this might be "confusing" -- that embedding the official videos was still copyright infringement. Someone might want to tell the marketing guys whoFrankly, this whole thing screams of some seriously mistaken or confused lawyers associated with The Discovery Channel, who not only seem to be completely out of touch and clueless as to how the internet works, but aren't even talking to the marketing people involved. These lawyers areundermining the show's own marketing efforts, pissing off fans, and closing down a large and popular fan group of the site with highly questionable legal claims.Unfortunately, it looks like John is giving in to the lawyers. He's said that the site will disappear as of August 11th, and the Discovery Channel will take over the domain. Again, I can understand the potential for some confusion with the domain name, but there werebetter ways for Discovery to handle this. Perhaps The Discovery Channel is taking the concept of its famousway too far, and turning its lawyers into sharks. They should watch out, as when you let the sharks loose on your biggest fans, they can come back to bite you.

Filed Under: copyright, deadliest catch, discovery, social media, trademark

Companies: discovery channel