The Really Useful Company has a website. Go and take a look at it if you like. All it has on Phantom is some cast lists which only cover the US productions, and a handful of 10 year old reviews. Oh yeah, you can also buy products from a very limited range of merchandise, and download some soundclips. A British Internet magazine reviewed the site and then reviewed Karin Willison's site, and concluded that her pages were a lot better than the RUG's effort.

Before the RUG got on the Web, Jason Emery had set up a Phantom of the Opera web site. This is more like it! A purely fan effort, no one getting paid, no one making money, but it covers productions around the world, it is full of information, it is a treasure-trove for fans. Were the RUG grateful for Jason's hard work in promoting the show and providing an invaluable resource for fans? No, they wrote to him complaining that he had copyrighted things on it. Their chief complaint was that he had the libretto of the show up, and people might download it and put on illegal productions. Duh, guys, you give this libretto free to anyone who sends you an SASE!

In the end, and after the RUG got a lot of angry e-mail from outraged fans, Jason got to keep most of his material up. We thought we'd seen the end of the matter for at least a few years. Then another site got an e-mail from them. Just a fan who'd put up biographies of his favorite Phantoms, and information about the show in Canada (which the RUG's site doesn't even cover). He'd used the logo on the front page, and had scans of photos from the program. Naughty boy! Giving free advertising to the RUG without their permission again. Tsk!

The RUG kept claiming that they would like to come to an agreement with fans so we could present nice pages without upsetting them. They said perhaps they should set up an image library and let us use images from that. The Phantom mailing list came up with a variety of suggestions on how the RUG could check fan sites and approve ones which were not using the logos in a way that could damage the reputation of the show (like, all of them...). These were sent to the RUG. We never heard a word back, even though they made the first suggestion.

That was 8 months ago. This month the RUG wrote to another fan site. Again they claim they'd love to agree on a scheme of allowing fan sites use of copyrighted material -- but they ignore our attempts to solve the dispute! So now we're getting real pissed with them.

The RUG say we should ask permission before using copyright materials -- but fans who have asked have been IGNORED. The RUG does not even give them the courtesy of a response.

Christine Daae, a fan from England who changed her name legally, has seen the show around 50 times, and has given the RUG a lot of publicity from having articles written about her in numerous papers in England, found this out. For 3 years she ran a Phantom fanzine keeping fans in touch with each other and with Phantom news around the world. One front cover was a collage, which included the mask and rose. The RUG wrote to her complaining, and advised her to get in touch with their legal department. So she did. She wrote to them asking for an opportunity to speak to them or meet with them to discuss closer liasons between the RUG and her fan club, and the possibility of being allowed the use a little mask logo on the magazine (Cameron Mackintosh allows the Les Miserables fan newsletter to print advertisements featuring the logo). The RUG did not even bother to reply.

Another fan sought permission to use a quote from the show in an amateur publication of Phantom Fiction. She was politely asking for permission to do something which most people would never bother to ask about, and which could not in any way damage the show or RUG. They ignored her too.

This same fan then asked if people could use characters like Piangi in fan fiction, as Piangi is created by Lloyd Webber not by Leroux and therefore covered by US copyright. The RUG not only said no to that, but they also said that fan fiction cannot use the names Andre and Firmin for the managers, even though names are NOT covered by copyright laws, and the characters are in the original novel! The RUG tries to deny fans from using things which it has no legal rights over!

Sure, the RUG owns the copyrights and fan sites have no legal claim to be allowed to use them. But there are hundreds, thousands of similar sites on the Web, and most companies do not care! The big corporations which stamp down on fans using copyright photos are a minority, and they do it to make people visit the official sites instead of the fan ones. The RUG's official site is useless to fans. The Phantom section tells us nothing. The RUG could turn a blind eye, like most companies are doing. Or they could give us permission, following one of the ideas we've suggested to them. But they think we're helpless addicts to their shows and they can treat us in any way they want.