Foxed

Synonyms:	Cease and Desist, FOXed
See also:	The Viacom Crackdowns The Harry Potter Lexicon Trial PotterWar
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Foxed is term that was used in the mid 1990s to refer legal actions by 20th Century Fox against fan run fan sites of FOX owned shows like The X-Files, MillenniuM and The Simpsons.

Techno terms like “Foxed,” which means when a studio threatens legal action against an online blogger or forum user, came out of that period. Other terms now synonymous with the show came out of X-Files fan sites.

The X-Files: A History of the Fandom by Matt Allair, Den of Geek, Jan 24, 2018

Origin of the term

X-Files was a fandom that stood at the threshold of fandom's migration to the Internet and experienced maybe the first salvo in the "World Wide Web War Against Fandom". In the early-1990s few fans had the resources to host and design their own websites so fandom was concentrated to a few main archives and fan websites. By the mid-1990s, as technology and Internet access improved, more fan sites began appearing leading 20th Century Fox to launch a legal campaign against the use of images and sound files from its two more popular TV shows: The Simpsons, The X-Files, and MillenniuM.

For the last few years, Fox has closed many fan sites of “The Simpsons,” “The X-Files” and “Millennium,” citing intellectual property rights. Fans have been in an uproar, blaming everyone from show creator Chris Carter to overzealous Fox execs.

An awful lot of harsh, negative mail has arrived in the last week and it all has the letters F-O-X in common. Some of it comes in reference to last week's article about Twentieth Television's attempts to close down "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" fan pages on the

Web. A longtime TV Barn reader named Rhonda, better known by her handle Tiny Dancer, writes, "With regards to Fox closing the Buffy sites recently, trust me, they haven't stopped shutting down the 'X-Files' ones either. I was FOXed last week: a letter to me, a copy sent to xoom.com and I was gone within the hour! I made the mistake of offering free transcripts that people had poured their blood, sweat and tears into, and small sound files so people could brighten their dreary lives by hearing Mulder and Scully talk to them out of their

'puters, among many other things. The nerve, eh? Copyright notices all over the darn thing and no money ever changed hands -- in fact, I was the one spending moola on the server. Where exactly is the problem with free publicity for their ratings sagging series?!" (The happy ending, Rhonda reports, is that her page will soon be back up again at the Fox-sanctioned Fandom.com.)

Conan O'lineups This Week@TVBarn for 12/13/1999, alt.fan.conan-obrien

See also

• XPFC Correspondence with Fox...