Comments for Sony TV: Bigger Losers Than Ken Jennings

Sony TV: Bigger Losers Than Ken Jennings

2004-11-30T16:55:04Z

Man, I hate it when people get full of themselves and think they have power that they don't. Especially when it's over trivial things.

I don't care much about Jeopardy, but I've been entertained by Jason's scoops on the Ken Jennings saga.

Then Jason posted an audio clip of Ken's loss. And Sony TV asked him to take it down. Now, clearly, you can excerpt a work if you're doing news reporting on a subject, and Jason's been breaking news on this story since September and reporting on it since July. KenJen is J.Ko's beat!

But he's a nice guy, so he complied. Since he couldn't post the audio, there was a text transcript there, with the spoilers hidden.

And then they called him and made him take the text transcript down. I'm guessing they didn't call the Washington Post and ask them to remove this part of their story:

Alex Trebek: "The category is Business and Industry and here is the clue, ladies and gentlemen: Most of this firm's 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year. You have 30 seconds. Good luck."

"Nancy, you wrote down your response rather quickly, I thought. I hope it's correct," Trebek told someone apparently named Nancy, who appears to be Jennings's only opponent by the Final Jeopardy round, meaning his other competitor already had flamed out in red ink.
"What is H&R Block," Nancy had written. She got it right. Nancy had wagered $4,401. She now had $14,401...

Trebek: "And his final response is ..."

"FedEx," Trebek read. "His wager was $5,601; he winds up in second place with $8,799."

Hmm, that looks an awful lot like a transcript of the moment in question. Which I guess is okay if you're a newspaper that's regurgitating something that you've read... on a blog. Hello, Chilling Effects? We need to talk to you about Sony. Anybody want to find out who's responsible and ask them to change their policy?

Comment from Matt Haughey on 2004-11-30

2004-11-30T17:49:08Z

Sony is being so short-sighted here. Jason got me to watch Jeopardy for the first time in ages and I've caught dozens of KenJen's wins when I would have otherwise missed them and ignored the show entirely. Jason's posts reminded me to tape tonights show. I'm sure many other folks will be watching, spoilers or not.

I'm not buying any more WEGAs, ever. Sony's new TVs are just 42 inches of shame!

Comment from cosine5000 on 2004-11-30

2004-11-30T20:09:14Z

Hey, that transcript can't be right... the math is wrong.

Comment from Bill Jennings on 2004-11-30

2004-11-30T21:58:01Z

While I can't defend Sony's legal blustering (it's heavy-handed at best), I do think that both Jason and the Post are out-of-line for spoiling not only Jennings's loss but the actual Final Jeopardy answer and question. If I were the producer of Jeopardy, I'd be pretty pissed off too. Is it too much to ask that people wait to comment until after the show is aired?

Posting the clip and/or transcript before the broadcast serves no legitimate reporting purpose that I can think of, other than proving to us all that Jason got the scoop. After the broadcast is a whole 'nother story.

It's like when I'm at home watching the Tony's on the west coast, and someone on the east coast calls me up to tell me that Hairspray won best musical, and I get all pissed off and go online only to read everyone on all the message boards discussing the wins and losses before the show has even aired in California. Except Jason is the only one who's seen the show, and the rest of us are on the west coast waiting for the tape-delay.

It's just bad form.

PS: No relation to Ken, obvs.

Comment from Scott Johnson on 2004-11-30

2004-11-30T22:58:13Z

Personally, I would rather just ignore Sony and everything they produce. That company's time has past.

Comment from Lido on 2004-11-30

2004-12-01T00:22:54Z

This kind of mentality isn't hard to understand when it's coming from a company that is still desperately holdinging on to it's own ATRAC format.

Comment from Questionable Swami on 2004-12-02

2004-12-02T13:48:10Z

There is a simple solution to get Sony to back off -- email the advertisers and tell them how lame Sony Television is for doing this. Explain nicely to the advertiser how you really can't buy something from a company that indirectly supports such behavior.

I'd be willing to bet that if enough people did this, Sony get the message from their advertisers and would drop their litigation.

Comment from Jake on 2004-12-02

2004-12-02T14:28:13Z

i'd be surprised if sony pursued this beyond this week. my guess is that they just wanted the announcement held until the show aired, and now the point is pretty much moot.

of course, if they do pursue it, it might be nice for everyone to make a point of blowing up the story- especially people who do a lot of IP posts anyway, like boing boing. i imagine that sony would figure out pretty quickly that sending its lawyers after kottke is a terrible idea. i mean, he's practically the father of the modern blog, and one of the most influential tastemakers on the internet today.

Comment from Jayden on 2004-12-02

2004-12-02T16:08:20Z

Yeah Sony sucks big ones. I'm curious to hear more about the circumstances of the situation. I suspect Sony is evoking the Digital Milennium Copyright Act as if Kottke is some teenage kid file-sharing pirated movies that he videotaped in a theater. You know, if Sony pig-headedly pursues this, a case like this could be historic and set legal precedent establishing the status of blogs as journalism with full free speech protections vs. just being personal homepages of file-sharing kiddies. If Sony does evoke the DMCA, perhaps someone should contact the ACLU -- they'd probably love to take a legal case that chips away at that thing.

Comment from fluffy on 2004-12-02

2004-12-02T16:34:19Z

Bill: Kottke didn't just post the spoilers outright. He made it so that you had to specifically want to read the text in order to read it. Same with the audio clip; he didn't force people to listen to it (via EMBED or whatever).

Personally, I don't even watch TV (or even have a TV tuner at home) but I was interested in it, so I read and listened to it.

Comment from Bill Jennings on 2004-12-03

2004-12-03T09:58:58Z

Fluffy, he posted the spoilers. Whether you have to click a link or highlight a text is irrelevant. That's like a newspaper saying that something posted on page D4 is protected in a different way than something on the front page because people have to buy the issue and flip to that page if they want to read something.

Personally, I find Jason's hints about the potential chilling effects of all this to be frightening. If any legal funds are created, I'll be happy to donate what I can. I'm saddened that Sony seems to be continuing to pursue this beyond its requests for Jason to remove the audio and text transcripts. That totally sucks.

I've received a couple of emails based on my comment here, so I just want to clarify something. I think that posting a clip or transcript that includes the actual Final Jeopardy answer and question before the episode actually aired, is different in scope than just a message that indicates "Ken loses tonight: watch it!". It's a game show, and revealing how it ends and the answers to the puzzles beforehand is, in some way, damaging to the show.

Still, Jason did the right thing by pulling down the clip and transcript when asked. I hope that this is resolved soon and without putting Jason through legal hell.

Comment from etagloh on 2004-12-03

2004-12-03T11:58:31Z

Whether you have to click a link or highlight a text is irrelevant. That's like a newspaper saying---

Whoa! Slow down there. It's not 'like a newspaper' at all. Different medium, see? It's actually closer to CNN reporting on the tape-delayed Olympic events that NBC then showed in prime-time. (And sort of like MSNBC's own spoiler reports.)

Now, we can talk about copyright issues on the audio. But the transcript? Sorry, no damn way.

And in any case, it smells to me like a bit of viral/guerilla marketing gone wrong(ish) from inside Sony, given that Kottke was an established distribution network for KenJen tidbits. Perhaps the source is feeling a bit vulnerable right now: s/he possibly overstepped the mark. I suspect, though, that this will come out in the wash.

Comment from rachel on 2004-12-06

2004-12-06T22:33:15Z

My recollection is that Lisa de Moraes (who wrote what you quoted from the Post) actually stated that these quotes came from Kottke.org. I definitely read that article before I saw the tape on the D.C.-area broadcast, and even before I saw the scoop at Kottke, so I'm pretty surprised that they didn't ask everyone to take down the transcript. I guess the little guys are just the bigger targets.

Comment from sharon on 2007-08-05

2007-08-06T01:41:57Z

Does anyone remember a contestant, James Sexton who was on the Jeapordy show in the 1990's?

Comment from Anonymous on 2007-08-05

2007-08-06T01:48:07Z

Does anyone know where to research information concerning the Jeapordy tv show? I am looking for information concening a constestant James Sexton from NJ. I heard this contestant(deceased) was suing the show and I would like to find out if this law suit was ever came to pass.