The internet’s most notorious site for illegally watching The Simpsons online, WatchTheSimpsonsOnline, has unexpectedly shut down after at least four years of operation.
Here’s an outdated Wikisimpsons article about the site. Currently, visitors are greeted with this vague goodbye message:
Hello, The website you’re trying to reach has been permenantly shut down.
If you wish to watch new episodes of the simpsons online please visit hulu.com or fox.com.
Thanks for your understanding.
Simpsons creator Matt Groening has apparently joined the advisory board of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a non-profit organization that’s basically an ACLU for funnybooks. According to its website, one of CBLDF’s missions includes providing “for the legal defense of individuals whose First Amendment rights are threatened for making, selling, or even reading comic books.”
It’s a change of pace for Groening, who’s usually the one playing legal offense.
Last season there was a Simpsons episode where Bart becomes a street artist with the help of special guest star Shephard Fairey, because it’s impossible for a Simpson to develop a new skill without meeting the most famous people associated with that skill. Fairey’s perhaps best known nowadays for making that weird Soviet propaganda-ish Barack Obama “Hope” poster in 2008, but back in “the day” his claim to fame was the OBEY Giant campaign where he’d plaster stickers or spraypaint images of deceased wrestler Andre the Giant (later redesigned to avoid copyright infringement) everywhere – without permission! – with the word “OBEY” under it, which may have provided the inspiration for such cultural touchstones as internet memes and Microsoft advertising. For the episode, The Simpsons cleverly “mashed up” Fairey’s two pieces into a “parody” (using the term very lightly) featuring Homer’s face and the word “Dope.”
Anyway, the Associated Press sued him over the “Hope” poster (apparently they own the rights to Obama’s likeness??) and won. Last September a federal court sentenced him to two years’ probation and fined him $25,000. Now where’s an avant-garde street artist supposed to get scratch like that??
According to the French Simpsons site The Simpsons Park, the French networks W9 and Canal + have been blurring Duff Beer in Simpsons reruns. Why? Because a German brewer somehow won a trademark dispute with Fox and now they can legally sell Duff Beer, complete with a logo completely ripped off from the show. Although Fox had two Duff Beer trademarks filed in the European Union, a Belgian court annulled them “because they weren’t registered for an actual beverage” (the German brewer, Duff Beer UG, has applied for their own trademark, which takes a lot of chutzpah). And now that Duff Beer is available in France, French TV has to blur Duff Beer because advertising alcohol is apparently illegal there, and showing this fictional beer that’s been around for over two decades could be seen as an advertisement for this insane rip-off beer that brazenly stole its name and logo and has nothing to do with The Simpsons. Europe is weird.
Lawyers for 20th Century Fox take copyright infringement of The Simpsons very seriously. During the early 1990s, lawyers were sent to vendors who sold bootleg Bart Simpson t-shirts. Towards the end of the decade, many Simpsons sites received cease & desist orders for the grave crime of hosting framegrabs. More recently, Fox lawyers managed to take down a series of Simpsons video parodies featuring OJ Simpson. Even creator Matt Groening, who has a collection of bootleg Simpsons merchandise, personally dispatches lawyers from time to time.
Ben Jones, an artist in the art collective Paper Rad, has recieved many acclaims for his work; Paper Rad’s avant-garde comics often appear in hip indie comics anthologies such as The Best American Comics and Kramer’s Ergot. Following the massive Kramer’s Ergot 7, of which Groening was a fellow contributor, Jones was asked to contribute to the upcoming Treehouse of Horror comic book. According to a 2003 Comics Reporter profile, this would not be his first Simpsons comic:
Effective as illustration, Ben Jones’ comics demand reading. As noted by several of his fellow cartoonists, on no planet should a comic about Simpsons characters Homer and Moe taking a walk, getting high and skinny dipping (“Ho and Mo”) work on any level for a single second, let alone be funny and affecting and a touch profound. In the Alfe stories, Jones’ most frequent recurring feature and among the first comics the artist tried to sell through Million Year Picnic, Jones uses a sizable, extremely odd cast to pay tribute to simple pleasures and the way kindness and patience act as buttresses against life’s intolerable cruelties. Jones is to the idea of friendship what the cartoonist Jack Jackson is to Texas history, its primary comics chronicler.
Additionally, The Simpsons is a recurring motif in Paper Rad’s ouvre, as evidenced by their website.
Yet, despite such egregious acts of copyright infringement, Jones and Paper Rad do not appear to have been punished for their actions. As far as I can tell from a Google search, the art collective has never received a cease & desist letter from Fox’s attorneys. In fact, with his contribution to Simpsons Comics, Jones appears to have been rewarded for his copyright infringement!!! He is being endorsed, at least implicitly, by Bongo Comics, Groening, and Fox, who are apparently turning a blind eye to his wholesale appropriation of their intellectual property. Is Jones receiving preferential treatment simply for being a celebrity? Is this really the message Bongo Comics wants to be sending to infringers?
Some music sites are reporting that rock band Fall Out Boy, whose name unintentionally comes from Radioactive Man’s young ward, will be on the upcoming Simpsons Movie soundtrack. But is it possible they were forced into it, in lieu of being sued by Fox for copyright infringement? What else is Fox forcing the band to do? Developing… [The Rock Radio]
I realize I’m guilty of making a bunch of lame OJ Simpson jokes on this site. But come on:
O.J. Simpson in “The Simpsons”? An internet parody of The Simpsons featuring O.J. Simpson has infuriated bosses at 20th Century Fox.
The studio has asked online video site Broadcaster.com to take down three animated clips, titled The OJ Simpsons that re-imagine the series with the ex-American footballer.
…
The clips also parody the opening scene of The Simpsons, with Simpson being chased by several police cars – just like he was chased live TV in the US, after the pair were found dead in Los Angeles in June 1994.
Hey uh that joke’s about thirteen years too late guys [The Post Chronicle]