Hey, y’all.
For those of you who are old – time posters, I have returned to the ng. For those of you who’ve just discovered Daria or this ng or both, Greetings and Salutations –I’m Cricket. I’ve been chirping off and on since 1999.
Due to certain recent events (work, family, lawsuits against my current cable company) I haven’t had many chances to catch Daria on Noggin or do much more than lurk on this ng. But don’t think that I’ve abandoned you folks or Our Heroine – in fact, I’ve been giving much thought to the Daria situation since MTV (foolishly) dropped the show.
First, I’ve been writing to Comedy Central for almost a year, campaigning to get that network to pick up the undiluted Daria. Several reasons for this choice:
(1) Comedy Central is a basic cable network that reaches about 82 million US households (Noggin currently reaches about 35 million households through digital cable).
(2) Comedy Central’s viewership tends to skew toward the 18-49 demographic. That group includes most of Daria’s core audience (especially those who watched Daria during its MTV run); CC also attracts a number of teens.
(3) Viacom, which owns MTV & Noggin (and thus owns Daria) bought out [AOL] TimeWarner’s share of Comedy Central back in April. Since Viacom now wholly owns the only all-comedy channel on cable, it makes sense that a Viacom-owned comedy show would air on a Viacom-owned comedy network.
(4) Daria would fit in quite well with Comedy Central’s Animation Block on Sunday night/early Monday, along with Dilbert, Gary & Mike, The Critic (my favorite animated show after Daria) and Duckman. [I’ve already suggested to CC that they could have a “misfit” animation block featuring Daria (high school misfits), Downtown (young adult/Gen X misfits) and Dilbert (middle-aged office misfits). I have received no reply to this.]
(5) Given that CC airs raunchy shows like South Park, The Man Show, and the Friar’s Club Roasts, censorship wouldn’t be much of an issue. In fact, the problem could be that Daria is TOO tame (Alison the lecherous bisexual notwithstanding).
These are the points that I’ve been making to CC since last November, but I’ve received no responses to my snail mail or e-mail to date. If anyone else is interested in a campaign to have Daria aired uncensored, on Comedy Central, check my signature for contact info. Strength in numbers! (And don’t send lasagna boxes like we did for the Season 6 campaign – at least not right now! If we still don’t get some kind of response by, say, the first of the year, maybe THEN we can start sending the empty lasagna boxes to the CC offices.)
Second, I’ve been doing some research on video sales. The RIAA -- currently the bane of online music swappers -- is the body that certifies home video sales in the US. Currently, RIAA awards gold certification for videos & DVD sales of 50,000 units or $1 million in sales at suggested retail price. Platinum certification is awarded for sales of 100,000 units or $2 million in sales at SRP. I have links to the two main DVDaria-related petitions. Here’s my suggestion: If we can get between 50,000 and 100,000 US signatures on EACH of these two petitions (especially on the TVShowsonDVD.com petition, which tends to block out duplicate signatures), I think the folks at Viacom/MTV might FINALLY pull their heads out of their lower GI tracts and recognize the legitimate market for high quality Daria DVDs. Also, if we could get at least 50,000 to 150,000 signatures from folks outside the US, it could be the coup de gras in MTV’s campaign of Daria DVD Denial. (I’m wondering if we could get that many signatures by the end of 2003. Anyone have suggestions as to a realistic timetable?) With more than 100,000 signatures, we’ll show Viacom that there’s platinum in them thar hills, and get a legitimate, high quality Daria home video collection.
Finally, let me just say this: Although I’m a lawyer, I’ve refrained from giving any legal advice on this ng mainly because of ethics rules and jurisdictional issues. However, recently someone on this ng mentioned a “homemade” set of Daria episodes for sale on eBay. Thus, I feel compelled to provide you with a warning about this: do NOT buy or download any “homemade” videos of Daria, from ANY source. Doing so may constitute copyright infringement, and if Viacom decides to prosecute, they’ll probably have a very legitimate case of contributory infringement against the seller, the buyer, and eBay (or whatever place you got the videos from).
Like it or not, only Viacom has the legal rights to exploit Daria. Under current US copyright law (namely, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which the Supreme Court upheld this year), Viacom has the copyrights to Daria for up to 95 years from when the show aired. Thus, Daria stands to be under copyright through the year 2097 (when IICY goes into public domain).
Yeah, I know, it sucks that Viacom hasn’t released the entire series on VHS or DVD. And it sucks that those of us who legitimately tape the eps off Noggin for personal use to view at home at a later time can’t get a complete set of uncensored episodes. [This is a practice called “time-shifting,” which the Supreme Court says is OK – see the case Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417 (1984)]. But uploading and downloading eps over the Internet (as opposed to loaning your videotapes to a friend to watch) is NOT okay. From the cases & legal commentary I’ve been reading, one main issue is the breadth of the distribution made possible through the Internet: someone uploads, say, the entire first season (including “Sealed With A Kick”); several other people can download those eps and make copies to distribute; Viacom sees mass exploitation of their intellectual property without their permission and springs into action against any and all infringers they can get their hands on. (And the “fair use” defense won’t save anyone’s butts here, either. Neither will the fact that no money changes hands -- the recent lawsuits the RIAA filed against folks with large files of downloaded MP3s on their hard drives should be a testament to that.)
Look, I’m not here to get anybody in trouble, and I’m not going to report anyone to the FBI or other authorities. I’m just giving you all a friendly warning. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if folks from Viacom’s legal department are already patrolling this ng. But as much as we enjoy Daria, it’s not worth getting arrested or going to prison for. I’d rather pay $$ for a LEGITIMATE Daria DVD release, whenever it comes out, than to pay $$$ in fines for having a bootlegged copy right now. If we work together, we can bring out a legal release that much sooner – or at least get the entire uncensored series on TV so that people can tape the eps legally.
The contact info & petition links are below. Let’s get to work.
Save Daria. Amen.
Cricket
"Daria" on Comedy Central e-mail: [email] Phone: (212) 767-8600 Snail mail: Viewer Services, 1775 Broadway, NY NY 10019 DVD petitions: http://www.the-wildone.com/dvdaria/ http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/showinfo.cfm?showID=323