Sony TV: Bigger Losers Than Ken Jennings

Man, I hate it when people get full of themselves and think they have power that they don’t. Especially when it’s over trivial things.

I don’t care much about Jeopardy, but I’ve been entertained by Jason‘s scoops on the Ken Jennings saga.

Then Jason posted an audio clip of Ken’s loss. And Sony TV asked him to take it down. Now, clearly, you can excerpt a work if you’re doing news reporting on a subject, and Jason’s been breaking news on this story since September and reporting on it since July. KenJen is J.Ko’s beat!

But he’s a nice guy, so he complied. Since he couldn’t post the audio, there was a text transcript there, with the spoilers hidden.

And then they called him and made him take the text transcript down. I’m guessing they didn’t call the Washington Post and ask them to remove this part of their story:

Alex Trebek: “The category is Business and Industry and here is the clue, ladies and gentlemen: Most of this firm’s 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year. You have 30 seconds. Good luck.”

“Nancy, you wrote down your response rather quickly, I thought. I hope it’s correct,” Trebek told someone apparently named Nancy, who appears to be Jennings’s only opponent by the Final Jeopardy round, meaning his other competitor already had flamed out in red ink.

“What is H&R Block,” Nancy had written. She got it right. Nancy had wagered $4,401. She now had $14,401…

Trebek: “And his final response is …”

“FedEx,” Trebek read. “His wager was $5,601; he winds up in second place with $8,799.”

Hmm, that looks an awful lot like a transcript of the moment in question. Which I guess is okay if you’re a newspaper that’s regurgitating something that you’ve read… on a blog. Hello, Chilling Effects? We need to talk to you about Sony. Anybody want to find out who’s responsible and ask them to change their policy?