The "Foxing" of Daria Fandom

In 1999, the Fox Network began taking action against fan websites of various types. The reason these fansites were targeted was that Fox considered the use of photographs, scripts, and especially sound and video files the theft of its creative property.

The first site that we know to have been targeted was a "Millenium" fan site, but the crackdown later spread to sites of the Fox show with the most devoted fan following, "The Simpsons". The process worked thusly: whenever Fox's legal department found a target, the webmaster would be sent a "cease and desist" letter, stating that the use of its icons, symbols and whatever were in violation of copyright law, and that the person had to take immediate actions explicitly spelled out in Fox's threatening-looking boilerplate letter.

Either a) the fan would comply, or b) the fan would hold fast. If b) were the case, Fox's next letter would go to the internet service provider. The service provider would close the site at its end, figuring it was better to pull one customer's lone website than to face a possible legal battle with Fox.

The first of these Simpsons battles took place before Daria even hit the airwaves. However, not even Daria fandom would be unaffected.

On May 11, 2000, Damon Domjan's "Sounds of Cynicism" website – a website that contained Daria sound files, at the very least – was "Foxed" by the legal staff at Viacom, owner of MTV and holder of the "Daria" copyrights. Undoubtedly, many fans thought that SOC was already on shaky ground with its sound files, but that fan fiction sites would not be affected.

On June 11, 2000, Martin Pollard, webmaster of the "Outpost Daria" fan site, received a letter from his internet service provider, stating that his web privileges were suspended and that he had 72 hours to bring his account into compliance. The reason? Pollard had supposedly violated the provider's "Terms of Service".

How so? Violation of MTV’s intellectual property. He was "helpfully" given the name of MTV's legal counsel.

This was clearly a more aggressive form of "Foxing", and the dominoes rapidly fell across fandom.
a) Outpost Daria was "off the air". Suspended.
b) Fan sites went black/off the Internet in protest.
c) Other sites quickly removed all Daria graphics, sound files, and whatever, and
d) Talk of some sort of boycott/action began, but cooler heads prevailed.

However, Pollard quickly got in touch with someone at MTV Legal. It turns out that the "Foxing" of Outpost Daria had been done in error. An overzealous unnamed person at MTV Legal had jumped to the (false) conclusion that "Outpost Daria" had video files, and sent the letter to the internet service provider "by mistake" before someone could look at it.

The site was soon back on the Internet, and Martin Pollard decided to change webservers. It was a scary moment, however, as fans realized that someone at MTV was indeed watching them, if only the legal department.

As a result of the "Foxing", many of the older sites (Outpost Daria, The Irony Maiden) have a stripped-down look (no Daria features) and legal boilerplate at the own at the bottom of their pages stating that no legal copyright infringement is intended. What isn't told to the fans in Second Fandom is that MTV almost -- but not quite -- wounded Daria fandom in a major way.