A strange thing happened this week to a Disney fan website...it was closed down by the Disney Legal people. This seems to be a strange occurance as the Disney fans and their exhaustive websites actually do a better job at promoting the company than Disney themselves do. I hope this isn't the beginning of some shift to push people back onto the genuine http://www.disney.com sites.
The website in question was The Unofficial Disney Animation Archive:
http://animationarchive.net/
It's home page currently states "Well, due to legal issues with The Walt Disney Company, I have had to close The Unofficial Disney Animation Archive. I hope that everybody has enjoyed the site over the last 11 years." See that - 11 years this site operated without any trouble, one of the oldest Disney websites out there. It was a stalwart for info on new movies.
But in true internet fashion, a new line has been added today to the homepage that reads "But, keep an eye on the domain name on June 22nd for the all new Dreamworks Animation Archive" - so not only do we have Disney shutting down a great resource (and free advertisng) for Disney Animation, the owners of the site have now decided to reopen a Dreamworks animation website (they have already replaced the Disney logo with a Dreamworks Animiation one!
It will be interesting to find out the background on this site closure and what it may mean to fan sites in general over the next couple of years.