ABSTRACT
In May 2000 a rag-tag band of young rebels were limbering-up for battle. They were poorly resourced and ill-equipped, but were intent on inflicting a punishing blow against their considerably bigger, more powerful foe-Twentieth Century Fox. A few months earlier, lawyers representing the media giant had sent out stern letters to operators of unofficial websites dedicated to Fox’s demon-stalking TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In a threatening tone, the letters warned that legal action would follow unless the fans immediately removed from their sites all copyrighted material (whether it be logos, transcripts, video and sound clips, or any kind of picture).1 Effectively an attempt to close-down the unofficial websites, the studio’s heavy-handed intervention outraged many young Buffy fans. A particularly infuriated faction sprang into action. One highschool freshman (identifying herself only as ‘Jade’) organised a widely publicised National Blackout Day that saw unoffical fan sites across the world cease activity for 24 hours to draw attention to Fox’s overbearing attitude. At the same time, a 17-year-old from Los Angeles (who administered a Buffy fan site and worked under the pseudonymn
‘Solo84’) formed the ‘Buffy Bringers’—a group of incensed fans who launched an angry letter-writing campaign designed to deter advertisers from sinking money into Fox until the studio had backeddown. To many people, these internet ‘Buffy wars’ might seem a relatively trivial spat between an overwrought TV studio and an errant group of young viewers. The events, however, crytallised many issues surrounding cultural production, circulation, control and consumption in the fast-changing landscape of the new media.
