Buried in today's LA Times is a short story about a guy who did just that, and is now being punished for it.
Flap shuts 'Idol' prediction siteSo there you go. A guy figures out how to beat American Idol at their own game, and they demand he stop because of "copyright issues"? Of course they have more money than he does. So they will simply sue him into submission. As you can see, he has capitualted already. This is sad. I've mentioned my thoughts about American Idol in the past. In short, it sucks.
By Scott Collins, Times Staff Writer
March 18, 2006
Are the producers of Fox's "American Idol" trying to squelch a website that might predict the show's outcome?
Dialidol.com has been generating buzz among "Idol" fans due to its supposedly uncanny ability to predict which singers will get voted off in any given week. The site purports to do this with an autodialing program it provides to phone-in voters and then analyzes which contestants' numbers yield the most busy signals, presumably signifying the highest call volume. The contestant whose line is most available is deemed the least popular and therefore the most likely to be voted off.
"Idol" producer FremantleMedia is apparently not amused. Late Wednesday, the content of Dialidol was removed and replaced with a notice from webmaster Jim Hellriegel, who wrote that the producers had sent the site "a cease and desist letter yesterday claiming that Dialidol infringes on copyrights they own." The webmaster calls the site a "David" fighting the Fremantle "Goliath."
In a brief interview Friday morning, Ohio resident Hellriegel said he believed Fremantle was using the copyright infringement claim as a pretext for shutting down the dial-in service, which could threaten the suspense, and therefore the ratings, for the "results" shows.
The producers, meanwhile, aren't talking.
"Fremantle has no comment on this," Eric Green, a spokesman for the producers, said in an e-mail.
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