October 7, 1995

Dear Betty Boop Fans:

Last month, King Features, a division of the Hearst Corporation, contacted me about my Betty Boop Archive.

They liked the archive (the Web's one and only!), it seems, but they were concerned about the unauthorized use of their property, the character and image of Betty Boop.

Their attorneys sent me a legal agreement to sign, which generously allowed me to continue the free use the character and image of Betty, subject to certain minor restrictions.

One of the clauses in the agreement, however, was very troubling to me and my attorney.

Basically, the boilerplate "indemnification" clause they want me to sign required me to indemnify King Features (a division of a zillion-dollar megacorp) against any and all claims arising from my use of Betty material on my Web site.

Since the site contained sound files, images, video clips, text files, and ASCII-images I assembled from all over the Net, and a large number of similar resources sent to me by Betty Boop fans all around the world, agreeing to this indemnifcation clause was quite dangerous.

I had no idea, for example, where a lot of these files came from. Were the GIFs illegally scanned from a copyrighted book? Did someone digitize a Betty cartoon clip off a copyrighted videotape?

There was no way, my attorney and I agreed, that I could track down the ownership and rights to the scores of resources I had already put up on the WWW site (not to mention the 30 new clips and stills a Boop fan from Netcom had just sent me, but were not yet online).

If I agreed to the indemnification clause, I would open myself up to all sorts of legal problems if I were sued, and potentially even more disastrous monetary consequences if I also had to cover all of King Features' legal liability on top of my own.

I communicated this to King Features. The person I spoke to there had never seen the Betty Boop site, but I told her the problem I had about the provenance of the resources there, and she seemed to understand.

I did, however, propose a solution I thought could be mutually beneficial.

I had the Webmaster at www.phantom.com grep the log of 'hits' on just the main Boop page, and we determined that almost 53,000 people had visited the Betty Boop Archive in the six months it had been online (I took it off line once King Features sent me the letter).

There is obviously great interest from Betty Boop fans around the world, I told King Features: 53K 'hits' on a non-commercial site on an occasionally-flakey server, with a complicated URL (i.e., no cool www.boop.com address) was excellent!

If King Features really wanted to keep Betty on the WWW, and build on what I had done, there was a simple approach that could keep me and them out of legal trouble.

Let's set up an official Betty Boop site, I told them. Give me access to officially-approved Betty images, clips, sounds, etc.--stuff King Features owns--and we won't have to worry about any lawsuits.

We could publicize Betty's 60th birthday, promote the Betty Boop laserdisc coming out soon (from Republic Entertainment), hook up with the Betty Boop fan club, give people pointers to all the Betty Boop products now on sale, hype the "Betty Boop Confidential" cartoon re-release from the UCLA Film Archives, etc.

I am a freelance WWW designer and producer, and I quoted them a very reasonable fee for my work--an order of magnitude less than the $75-100,000 some corporations are paying for a presence on the Web.

King Features has just declined my offer.

I am not angry with them--just saddened.

Perhaps I did not properly communicate how much Betty is loved around the world (I wish I had saved all the thank you emails I got); perhaps I did not convince them of the power of the WWW to publicize their intellectual property. Maybe they don't think the corporate higher-ups would approve the project; maybe they want to do it themselves. I'll never know.

In any event, the Betty Boop Archive is dead.

I want to thank all of you who contributed clips, images, sound files, bios, etc., to my Boop site. It was fun while it lasted.

See you someplace else on the WWW,

\/0!d

P.S.:If you'd like to communicate with Betty's owners, you can write to Ted Hannah, Director of Advertising and Public Relations, King Features, 216 East 45th Street, New York, N.Y. 10017. The phone number there is 800-526-KING. Their fax number is 212-983-6259. Be nice ;-)

Editor's Note: this farewell letter appeared on the web as of January 31, 1997 at the following URL: http://www.phantom.com/%7Evoidmstr/BettyBoopArchive.html