Paramount Shuts Down Fan Blog

John Campea, Editor of TheMovieBlog.com, recently posted a photo of the Bumblebee character from Paramount Pictures’ upcoming Transformers movie. The studio had not granted permission to the site to post it. Paramount politely asked the image be taken down, which Mr Campea obliged. A second photo of several actors from the film was also found. Paramount again reacted, this time by submitting a request to have TheMovieBlog.com shut down by his hosting company. Though Campea wouldn’t comment on how he acquired either of the images, Media Geeks has never experienced such bullying techniques from the studio and in our opinion, felt the actions taken were exteremely unusual.

What follows is Mr Campea’s story and open letter to the mega-studio:

Last night at around Midnight EST. Paramount filed a complaint with The Movie Blog’s hosting company about an alleged copyright violation. This complaint resulted in The Movie Blog being taken down for 7-8 hours this morning.

It should be noted that we at The Movie Blog did not receive a single request from Paramount to remove the image in question.

Following reading Paramount’s complaint, I was outraged. I wrote the following letter to them which I share with you now. Needless to say, you’ll never see another piece of Transformers the Movie news or talk on this site.

Am I over reacting a little in this matter? Perhaps I am. Fair enough. But this has really pissed me off. Here is the letter I sent them:

Greetings. This is John Campea, Founder and Editor of The Movie Blog – www.themovieblog.com

The Movie Blog is not one of the larger sites on the internet, right now we only have just over a million readers per month. For almost a year on both our site and on our Podcast (which won Podcast of the Year handed out at the SXSW festival this year) we have almost daily been hyping, talking about, and gushing over your Transformers the Movie project.

We’ve done nothing but tell the world how we think it’s the best movie coming down the pipe. We constantly talk about how we think Michael Bay is the best man for the job. On and on we go crazy about the Transformers.

That is over. No more.

Last week I received a request from two of your representatives asking that I remove a picture of the character “Bumblebee” from our website. I responded by asking if you were SURE you wanted us to take it down since it seemed to be generating so much positive publicity and buzz for your project. Your representatives both said “yes”. So, without delay I took the picture down. I can understand this. The Bumblebee picture gave away a character secret.

However, this morning I awoke to find that my website had been taken offline because YOU PEOPLE had filed a copyright complaint with my hosting service. The copyright complaint wasn’t for any scene of filming. It was a candid picture of 4 actors standing around off camera posing for a picture together. That’s all it was. There was no notice of copyright on the image, and being just a posed picture of 4 actors who were all already announced as being in the picture, I had no way of knowing you would have any problem with this image being online. And WHY did I have no idea you would have a problem with it???

Because not once did you ask me to take it down. Not one easy email to say you didn’t want it online. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN 10x EASIER FOR YOU JUST SEND ME A 2 LINE EMAIL LETTING ME KNOW YOU WOULD PREFER THAT IMAGE NOT BE ONLINE than the 4 paragraph legal letter sent to my hosting company.

This has caused me a world of inconvenience and headache and disappointed me tremendously.

Is this how you treat your fans? Is this how you treat the people who are out here heaping loads upon loads of free positive fanboyish publicity and hype on your movie?!?! I am nothing short of disgusted by how you have chosen to deal with this.

You shut my site down. A fan who has been trying his best to make Transformers the most talked about film in production. A fan who has been praising your project almost daily. A fan who already once took down an image that you wanted down with just a simple request. And this is how you treat your fans? Shutting them down without so much as a 2 line email request or to at least let us know you were upset with something.

Fine. If this is how you treat people… then that is how you shall be treated. From now on The Movie Blog will not mention, reference or talk about anything to do with your movie or your project. Heavens forbid that I may say something that you don’t like and wake up to find my site taken down again.

The Movie Blog is nothing. A small tiny site by most standards with only a million readers. I’m sure this won’t effect you at all. But seriously folks… just a little common decency is all you needed to show. Just a simple 2 line email to ask “hey, can you take this down”. That’s all. I already proved I respond to your requests. I had no idea this particular image was a problem for you.

But instead you decided to “Show me who’s boss” and shut my site down.

Well you did it. You really showed me who’s boss. Do you feel all big and tough now? So well done. You lost a fan, and you lost a whole years worth of free positive hype and publicity. I hope it was worth it to you.

As an aside, I’m being quite reserved about my feelings on this. If you are at all interested in the full extent of our anger over this, just have one of your people listen to our Podcast Friday night.

John Campea
Editor of The Movie Blog
www.themovieblog.com
john@themovieblog.com

Again, Paramount’s actions in this case were considerably over the top, but unlike any that we have ever experienced with the studio. More as this story unfolds.