"Bert is Evil"

[bandit957]

Anyone else remember a website called "Bert is Evil"?

It was hilarious. I don't think the Wayback Machine even has it at all, because someone had their fee-fees hurt by it.

[LilianaUwU]

I don't think the Wayback Machine even has it at all, because someone had their fee-fees hurt by it.

Or it's because whoever owns Sesame Street is one of those copyright abusers that strike down everything because they don't understand fair use. I'll have to agree that preservation shouldn't be hindered by feelings, though sometimes it's best left behind in the past.

[TheCatalyst31]

Looks like it has its own Wikipedia article. The archive links there seem to work.

[Max Rockatansky]

Ernie always struck me as the actual evil one.  Bert was just moody and was too fixated on his bottle cap collection. 

[Scott5114]

Or it's because whoever owns Sesame Street is one of those copyright abusers that strike down everything because they don't understand fair use.

PBS???

[LilianaUwU]

Or it's because whoever owns Sesame Street is one of those copyright abusers that strike down everything because they don't understand fair use.

PBS???

More specifically Sesame Workshop. They're part of a bunch of companies like Nintendo and Disney that can't fathom the idea of people making fan works of their stuff.

[Scott5114]

I mean, I can sort of forgive Sesame Workshop in particular for not wanting fan works of Sesame Street circulating too much. It's a show aimed more or less exclusively at very young children, so it's very unlikely that any sort of fan work is going to be made by or targeted at the original audience, and it probably wouldn't be very good for the original target audience to run across that sort of thing unprepared if they type "big bird" into Mom's phone.

That's somewhat different than Nintendo blowing its top because someone in its all-ages audience dared to write a Zelda fan work where Link and Sidon kiss or whatever.

[formulanone]

I don't think the Wayback Machine even has it at all, because someone had their fee-fees hurt by it.

It's none of these things, ten seconds in your favorite web browser will tell you the site is on Wayback but didn't want to host it any longer. If your webpage was a phenomenon in those days, you paid for all that traffic, and there was very little you could do to offset those costs except pay-up or hope to be bought out. The sites are mirrored (here's one without much advertising, from Tripod...yup, still chugging)  if you need your fix.

Or it's because whoever owns Sesame Street is one of those copyright abusers that strike down everything because they don't understand fair use. I'll have to agree that preservation shouldn't be hindered by feelings, though sometimes it's best left behind in the past.

Fair Use is where you use something once for illustration purposes. Example: I use a photo, image, or logo of something to depict it where words could not convey enough information, rather than re-use it multiple times as if it was my own image. This isn't hard to understand; everything doesn't fall under unlimited Fair Use because we want it to, otherwise it would render copyright useless.

There was some outrage from Children's Workshop, but probably because the public Web was still a fad and most of this has more or less blown over by now, though not every company and corporation was trying to enforce the Digital Millennium Copyright Act at that time, either. By then, the joke merged with real-life and completed the circle, and whenever someone stops new content, it's overtaken by a myriad of shiny new things.

I mean, I can sort of forgive Sesame Workshop in particular for not wanting fan works of Sesame Street circulating too much. It's a show aimed more or less exclusively at very young children, so it's very unlikely that any sort of fan work is going to be made by or targeted at the original audience, and it probably wouldn't be very good for the original target audience to run across that sort of thing unprepared if they type "big bird" into Mom's phone.

Me too, and there's a public good that comes from Sesame Street, because it may very well be one of the most important TV shows to ever hit the airwaves. While there's dozen of famous TV shows that adults remember and recall fondly, Sesame Street taught toddlers and young children to read, sound out words, rhyming, phonics, colors, shapes, counting, simple math, grammar basics, how to interact with others, and dealt with several other subjects. So it acted as a pre-school for families whom could not afford or not have time for it.

[mgk920]

Just another reason why the USA desperately needs a complete top-to-bottom rethink of its federal copyright law.

Mike

[vdeane]

Given the image in question that got the site taken down per Wikipedia (Bert with Osama Bin Laden) and the post-9/11 mood the country was in, I can understand what happened.  Anything and everything to do with terrorism was a very big deal back then.  Even now, the topic is charged in a way it wasn't before 9/11, though not nearly to the extent it was in the immediate aftermath.

[formulanone]

Just another reason why the USA desperately needs a complete top-to-bottom rethink of its federal copyright law.

Mike

If anything, this particular situation all sorted itself out without the needs and threats of litigation. A few people got their fame, nobody profited nor lost money over it, Bert is still a character, the only people who were outraged had a claim to do so, most everyone had a laugh, and nobody had to go to court.