A Fan Site's Tome to the Opera
Danit Lidor
Opera lovers, upset that a popular site honoring New York's Metropolitan Opera was forced off the Web because of alleged trademark violations, hope the two sides' meeting Friday will have a successful resolution. By Danit Lidor.
The fat lady coughed at the Metropolitan Opera this week. Whether she'll be able to keep singing is another matter.
Last week, John Patterson, the beleaguered creator of an opera fan site called MetManiac, reluctantly shut down the site after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the opera company's legal department.
The company claimed the name MetManiac and the contents of the site violated their trademarks and copyrights.
Although the threats made Patterson and other opera lovers très misérables, they made their voices heard. Members of the Opera-L e-mail list and watchdog webloggers wrote a flurry of e-mails to the Metropolitan Opera's general manager, Joe Volpe, detailing their disappointment in the opera company.
Several days later, Volpe contacted Patterson.
"He was extremely gracious, self-effacing and responsive," Patterson wrote to his supporters on the Opera-L list. "And, yes, he heard you."
Friday, Patterson, who lives near Washington, will meet with Volpe and other opera officials to discuss the legal predicament and the future of the site.
Volpe did not respond to e-mails requesting comment.
While MetManiac may yet live again, cease-and-desist-ordered fan sites are just one example of corporate encroachment and entitlement into the future of Internet public policy. Some organizations worry that the Supreme Court case Eldred v. Ashcroft and the Napster decision have created precedents that could allow the courts to aggressively crack down on any unauthorized use of trademarked entities.
"Intellectual property law is out of sync with the Internet," law professor Lawrence Lessig wrote in an e-mail. "Its restrictions often make little sense, and the extremism of its powers mean ordinary and sane uses of content can be rendered illegal.
"There is no possible justification for banning MetManiac. The law that allows it should be changed."
Over the years, courts and public-policy makers have learned how to mediate and monitor copyright and trademark issues, said Michael Madison, a professor of copyright and trademark law at the University of Pittsburgh. "But on the Internet we don't have the benefit of those distinctions."
"I say, let 1,000 flowers bloom," he said. "I know I'd rather live with that system. But the way that the law/political/capitalist system is going –- it's not very likely at all."
Patterson said the site was created to celebrate and annotate nearly 70 years of Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. It featured nearly complete lists of broadcasts from the 1930s to the present, but the lists were not linked to anything.
It also provided a message board for opera lovers to discuss shows and buy, sell and trade tickets. Occasionally, the site featured brief video clips from several noncommercial unreleased Met telecasts.
The home page also clearly stated that it was not affiliated with the Metropolitan Opera.
Patterson claims that although he tried to negotiate with the lawyers, "it quickly became apparent that they would be satisfied with no less than the complete dissolution of the site," he said. "Even the name MetManiac, they said, had to go."
Karen Kitterman, an attorney at Fenwick & West, said that since Patterson's site is a noncommercial labor of love and doesn't sell any merchandise, carry any advertising or make any money, there should be a measure of good faith in settling the case.
In this particular situation, Madison said, what Patterson has done is nothing more than "simply expressing his affection. And the object of his affection is rejecting him in the most brutal way possible."
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