Van The Man Fan Websites Close Down
Popular unofficial websites of Van Morrison have closed up shop in the last two weeks at the request of Web Sheriff, a legal firm whose business according to its website is "the protection of intellectual property and privacy rights in the Entertainment Industry". They have made this move in conjunction with asking bittorrent file sharing sites that enable the downloading of Morrison live concert performances to crease allowing this practice. ( See Van The Man Requests File Sharing Ban )
The Wavelength fan site came back online on
March 10th in a greatly reduced capacity. It is currently limited to
listing upcoming concerts and meet points for fans. The site has this
message for users: "Wavelength has received a number of requests from
Exile (production company) via Web Sheriff to make changes to the site and these are under
discussion".
The Hayward Site which included all manner of Van minutiae including
discography, lyrics, and interviews has been reduced to these two
words: "stay tuned". Before closing up shop, the site's operator posted a letter. Here is an extract:
This site began as a personal hobby about 12 years ago, an expression of my own enthusiasm for Mr. Morrison’s music, which I hoped to share with other fans…The tone is respectful; there is no advertising on the site — never has been; there is no facilitation or encouragement of piracy; in fact the site has long contained a statement to the effect that bootlegging was “not condoned”. Any fair-minded visitor to the site is likely to have concluded that the site promoted, and helped fans to better understand, Mr. Morrison’s work.
Despite this history, despite all of these facts, on Monday, January 14 I received a message from someone working for an outfit named WebSheriff, who claimed to represent Van Morrison and Exile Productions. According to the message, this website stands accused of (and I quote): “numerous infringements of our said clients’ IP [ed: Intellectual Property] rights including, but not limited to, the infringement of copyrights, trademarks, goodwill, performers rights, moral rights, publicity rights, privacy rights and the wholesale facilitation of further, numerous infringements by third parties on a grand scale (such as providing access to bootleg / unauthorised / illegal recordings)” end quote. I’ll repeat for emphasis: “wholesale facilitation of”; “on a grand scale”.
Surviving over 40 years in the pop music business has certainly entitled Van to do things his way, but it is hard to see how this rather heavy handed approach is going to benefit him. Today, if you compare the "live dates" pages on Van's official site with Wavelength, you will see that the fan site has more up-to-date information. While these actions may result in more visits to his official website, alienating some of his most loyal fans does not seem to be an especially good idea.
