"They're shutting us down, Scully." - Fox Mulder

X - F - A - C - T - O - R

X-Philes For Abolishing Censorship Rights

On Friday, October 25th, the day of the premiere of of FOX's heavily promoted new TV series Millennium, Gil Trevizo, a member of the X-Phile community (fans of the X-Fileson the internet), received a cease-and-desist order concerning the Unofficial Millennium site he had donated his time and effort to creating. When the order was not immediately followed, his web access was terminated - forbidding this college student who maintains several X-Phile mailing lists, access to either the web or his email account.

X-Philes, upset by this insult, and fearful that this was just the first step in a campaign by FOX against all unofficial web sites, flooded the network with emails protesting their actions, even managing to crash FOX's email server. But to no avail.....

Despite all of Gil's efforts to negotiate with the FOX representative, David Oaks, there would be no compromise. The site was shut down on Monday, October 28th, and FOX won this battle.

But this does not appear to be the end of the story. In fact, hints have come to light that this may just be the first step in a FOX Network campaign to end the existence of unofficial web sites for their shows ... a test case to see the response on the web.

We intend to give them a response, all right; we intend to fight.

Why a company would insult its fans by forcing down sites that for many are a labour of love, a way of showing their loyalty to the shows and the characters they enjoy, is beyond us. It is becoming clear that this is not just a matter of either copyright or trademark infringement ... but that FOX execs want complete and total control over how every facet of their company is portrayed on the internet. If we cannot reach a peaceful conclusion, we are willing to fight.

We hope that you will join us.