original update 4/25/97

Please read the following and sign the guestbook if you care at all
about the rash of Simpsons sites being shut down.

Welcome to the Definitive Frink.

The page has been changed and turned black for a reason.

Today is a very sad day in the world of the Simpsons Web. A site has been shut down which brought many smiles to many people. Shannon Picken has received the FOX cease and desist order, and has at least temporarily given up on the Simpsons.

It's very unfortunate. There are many Simpsons sites on the web, but there are none that were as great as Pick's Tribute to the Simpsons. Shannon had spent hours and hours (and more hours) in her labour of love. Her images were great, her design was brilliant, and it was the be all end all of fan pages. Shannon made no money off of her site, and had no links or banners relating to for-profit organizations. It was strictly because of her love for the show and the creative genius of the staff that she was doing this.

For those of you relatively new to the web, The Simpsons fan sites and the web went hand in hand years ago. I don't know if there was ever a time where HTTP was around and there wasn't a Simpsons fan page somewhere. The fan sites have been around since the incarnation of the web, and now are being shut down by FOX. Some of the sites should have been shut down. Basically, any site that is trying to make money off of the popularity of the Simpsons shouldn't be around. That's not a true fan site.. that's not what we're about. Shannon's site was the de facto fan site. She spend literally hundreds of hours on her site, and had put her whole heart and soul into it, only to be another statistic. I can understand why FOX shuts down sites that are making money off of The Simpsons without consent. However with the closing of Shannon's site, they have gone too far.

I don't believe that FOX understands the ramifications of what they are doing, and that's rather unfortunate. The medium is new to them and they obviously don't understand it. The Web has given all of us instant access to a printing press with a worldwide mailing list and infinite paper. For corporations, this can be a scary thing.

What I believe FOX needs to do is understand that they are alienating the people that mean the most to them on the web. The people like myself and Shannon who spend hundreds of hours on our sites in a labour of love for the Simpsons can be FOXs biggest friend. Shannon's site had an average of 1000 hits a day. FOX has thrown those hits into an abyss, all the while Pick's Tribute redirecting some of those people to the FOX site.

Another thing that FOX is sorely in need of are reasonable guidelines on what Simpsons sites can and cannot do. It's understandable that none of the Simpsons fan sites should have any for-profit references on them. That is just common sense. Many of the fan sites that don't have advertisements and such are run by reasonable people. I know, as I've conversed with many of them. They display pictures, some sounds, and some screen shots. People are not going to stop watching the Simpsons because they can listen to a sound file or view a stationary screen image. There's no comparison between looking at a still and watching the full show. We're not trying to take away market share on the Simpsons: We're trying to increase it. By giving people access to more information about the show and simple media files, people get excited about the technology and the show. And they watch it more. And isn't that what we all want?

We Simpsons site authors are not cold, calculating, rip-off artists. The true Simpsons site authors are doing this as dedication to a show that we find brilliant. We make no money off of it, and really don't want to. We want other people to enjoy the show, and learn as much as they can about a phenomenon like The Simpsons. We're hard core fans, we're not bootleggers. We want the Simpsons to have more viewers. More viewers means more ratings. More ratings means more money. And finally, all of these things put together means more seasons of pure bliss that we know as The Simpsons.

"They owe you? They've given you countless hours of free entertainment. If anything you owe them"

So that pretty much sums it up. We are fans paying back, giving gratitude (not to mention free publicity and advertisement) and homage to the Simpsons. The Simpsons have enriched my life. My sense of humor is getting stranger by the minute, I have witty quips that I can always use in conversation, and most importantly, they make me happy. They make me laugh. My daughter who is 6 years old absolutely loves them. She will pull Simpsons quotes out of the blue and crack us up. Recently she put something on her head, and said,

"Look at me, I'm Davy Crockett!"

And just about gave us heart attacks because we were laughing so hard.

The Simpsons has enriched all of our lives in one way or another.

Please don't destroy that.

Aaron