Whether you watch American Idol or not you have probably heard, what is turning out to be the hottest saying in the country; “pants on the ground” sometime this week.
The catch phrase comes from an audition of Larry Platt on this weeks America Idol Audition show. (click here to watch the clip)
It has become one of the hottest stories, videos and saying in the country in just a few days.
Even the quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings Brett Favre got into the action today, after winning his playoff game he was shown on TV doing his own version of “Pants On The Ground“. (Click here to watch that video)
A direct search for the term “pants on the ground” returns more than 26,000,000 million results.
The domain pantsontheground.com was registered back on November 6th 2009, by a “Patrick Lynn” of North Hollywood California.
I was wondering why someone would register such a strange expression back in November and even wrote to the registrant a few days ago to ask them why, and how they got lucky enough to register the domain months ago.
I did not get an answer.
Digging a little deeper, I found the Supervising Producers for the episode that aired this week are listed as: Patrick Lynn and Megan Michaels
Unlike the performance and result shows for American Idol, the auditions are held months prior to air.
Now I’m sure there are a lot of Patrick Lynn’s in the US, even in California, but you got to thinks its a strong possibility that the producer working on the show, saw the tremendous potential of owning the domain of what was certain to become a media phenomenon and the producer and registrant maybe one in the same.
Of course it could be just a very, very big coincidence.
The domain’s traffic as you would expect is skyrocketing.
Alexa.org is ranking the site as the 151,000 most popular in the US and the show only aired less than a week ago.
Unfortunately for the registrant, the domain is parked with the registrar, so the only one making money on this domain name so far is Godaddy.com.
Sure he might have bought the .com but I have the .ca and I actually have some interesting stuff on there so if you want the REAL Pants on the Ground fansite use the .ca!
http://pantsontheground.ca
What a waste of potential income. That said, i don’t see anything wrong with what he did (morally or legally) as there is no trademark. Too bad he didn’t follow through for the homerun though.
I ve been following registrations of reality tv shows for a while now
Prior to summer 2009, you could just watch the show when aired and register a bunch a domains according to auditionnees or catchphrase…potential
This year I had the same strategy, but oh surprise, most of the domains had been registered on the day of the auditions.
My feeling is that since the Suzanne Boyle storm and other S.Cowell success, the production became more aware of the importance of domain name registration.
And it became almost possible.
The good news though is that (at least in the UK), auditions are now opened to the public (audience).
Good on them. I dont know of any competent company that wouldnt do anything short of what this guy has done. They are simply protecting their business interests from cybersquatters.
And they call us beasts for registered potential trademarks five years before the trademark exists?
Here’s a clear case of registering a name associated with a performance on the show with the intent to profit – how shameful for Idol that its own producers would do such a thing.
Julia
I wouldn’t have as much a problem with this, if the owner of the show registered the domain to “protect” the phrase.
However in this case, the domain is not registered to the owner and producer of the show, Fremantlemedia, but an employee who seems to have done in an individual capacity.
If the show wanted to protect the saying it should have registered it to and for the benefit of Mr. Platt who actually came up with the concept of pants on the ground.
That domain or any income it may produce should belong to the guy who came up with the catch phrase in the first place.
nice work MHB! I love exposes
From what I can assume, the poor guy must have signed a release outside that which is signed by the contestants (since he isn’t a competitor because he is decidedly over the age limit), which included any content he gave up in his appearance on the show. The performance is owned by Fox or Freemantle or whoever, so doesn’t this make Patrick Michael Lynn of Studio City a cybersquatter, regardless of his position on the show?
My other question is, since the old guy came up with this on his own before he appeared on the show, and is the original copyright holder (by virtue of having created it), does the fact that he signed a release mean he only gave up the performance of the content during his appearance on the show and not the ownership of the original content?
Hi Michael:
I believe your observation would make some domainers to reg other extensions in that name.
The domain owner could benefit now if she points the name to her company’s developed website(s) such as Americanidol.com
I wonder if Megan Michaels was aware Patrick Lynn was busy registering
“pantsontheground.com” in his own name? Wouldn’t Freemantle own it as
a “work product”-assuming they found out-hello! If it is Mr. Platt’s original
composition Freemantle would own only that performance’s broadcasting
rights. Glad you found out about this-looks a lot like taking advantage…..
Michael
Of course I would have to read the release he signed to tell you what rights he signed away.
However he certainly did not sign away rights to employees of Freemantle, one of which now holds the domain.
Interesting detective work, Em-Bee!
What everyone is missing here is that regardless of signing a release to perform on AI that gives up the performer’s rights to the actual appearance and his/her likeness to that appearance in perpetuity, that does NOT give AI the automatic rights to the intellectual property that is the song “Pants On The Ground”.
So ultimately, James Platt, who I believe is the songwriter and performer, can sue the person to receive that domain back, and potentially for unfair business advantage. Rights to performing and rights to intellectual property are two different things.
If U2 performs on the Tonight Show (heh heh), the Tonight Show will own the performance rights, or at least “have a license” to use the performance as long as they want, with certain limitations. However, U2 would not be giving The Tonight Show the rights to “own” or “control” any song they were performing.
This is the same situation here with the AI thing. This could be a major scandal.
BTW: The song was obviously going to be made into a hit and promoted, it’s too funny and catchy, and that’s what the producers foresaw probably after seeing the guy perform it.
interesting to see where it goes!
Stephen
good point, but lets not also forget that the guy did not sign any rights away to Patrick Lynn, a producer of the show.
The domain is not owned by the show but by her.
Once she heard Simon say it was a sure hit she went out, maybe even behind the employers back and registered the domain for his own benefit
Hi Em-Bee,
Yes, I understood that. I thought I read someone say that he would have given up the rights to the song for performing on the show. And we also still don’t know whether this Patrick Lynn isn’t acting as a proxy owner for the domain name in order to prevent any potential “backlash” towards American Idol et al.
Stephen
If I was this guy I would argue that the fact that the domain is registered to a producer, not to the show, and its is enough to show bad faith and public opinion would demand that the domain would be handed back over to him.
I don’t care about Fox, Freemantle, Patrick Lynn or whoever else is setting up to milk a profit off of Mr. Platt’s phrase. My only hope Mr. Platt himself gets his fair share for coming up with the idea in the first place. Unfortunately, history is not on his side. Time and again the creator of fad phrases like this gets completely screwed out of any money or only gets pennies and not dollars in situations like this.
Em-Bee,
For sure, public opinion would be outraged if this racehorse got out on the track and won a few, and it was discovered that the “new owner” stole it from the guy who raised it.
Patrick Lynn’s lookin’ like a fool with his pants on the ground. pants on the ground
This domain now redirects to American Idol’s video of Larry Platt on their website. Registrant info has not changed, nor have nameservers.
@ Ed Muller,
This is an amazing turn of events, and something NOT favorable to the AI producers, unless Larry Platt signed over the rights to the song to them. They must have made some deal with Larry to get the rights to the song, and now to that domains “pantsontheground.com”, in order to point the domain specifically to AI’s website.
Without know this information of whether Larry sold the rights to the song to the producers of AI, we can’t say something funny is going on here. HOWEVER, we should do everything we can to dig for the details on whether Larry did in fact get compensated for “selling all rights” to his song “Pants On The Ground” to Freemantle.
It would be great if someone could dig up any agreement details, even calling TMZ or other entertainment site, and asking these questions. If in fact, there is no deal for AI to own the domain to the song, then you have a potential scandal where AI is taking advantage of Larry Platt. We need to know whether a deal was made between Freemantle and Pratt for the rights to the song.
I’d love to see it go either way: Larry gets a cut of the royalties and a cash bonus up front, or Larry gets a hand from the dirt digging media to expose Freemantle/AI in any alleged infringement on Larry’s rights to his song.
I think it behooves someone in the domain industry to lead the investigation into this issue, just to make the domain industry at least have an image of legitimacy, which a lot of media idiots have not done by failing to do their homework.
This is a great topic to investigate… hint hint…
in securities law this is called insider information and is associated with jail time ie joe nacchio. this is considered bad faith an individual had previous insider knowledge to priviate information and seeked to profit from his particular valuable information.
there is way more at play here american idol is not valid in their counting of votes.there is no litigetmate accounting firm oversight.
each voter can vote up to 10 times per line.in addition contestants that should have won ie dougherty were cut from the show,judges used their own descreation for personal profit.
Stephen
I sent this off to TMZ, Inside Edition and Extra days ago and haven’t heard anything.
Maybe more people need to contact them to get attention.
Hi Em-B
Can you post what contact email addresses you used so I don’t double up, or maybe I can move it up the ladder a bit more with some of my entertainment contacts. If you post the emails you used here, other domainers can write to them, and then I’ll research up some more. We should also post this on AI’s blog/forum and other AI fan club forums.
We can get justice for this guy, and for once, DOMAINERS WILL BE SEEN AS HEROES! I can see us doing interviews right now with the papparazzi. 😉 You first!
Stephen
I went to the sites and filled out the hot tips forms.
In retrospect maybe not the best way to go
I checked the TMZ site and found several mentions of the domain being registered, but the people making the comments didn’t understand that the domain name being registered in Nov 2009 just meant that the taping was held back then, and a producer at the taping went and registered the domain. But for it to point to AI right now looks pretty suspicious. hmmmm
Any updates on this?
The domain is still owned by the producer but now goes to American Idol’s site
I posted this ripoff of the domain name on several major websites, including AmericanIdol.com (don’t know if they published it).
As far as I know, a producer of a show doesn’t OWN a name of a song that a songwriter performs on that show. I haven’t seen any outrage from it tho… probably because the song isn’t trending the way it SHOULD be…. (cuz I hate seeing short leg, draggy baby diaper jeans on guys, but it’s not a crusade for me, so…)
Someone should just advise the guy who wrote this song that he’s getting ripped off by American Idol, unless they’re paying him a PPC rev.
Stephen
We don’t know how the release read.
If I was the producers I would have contestants sign as much away as they could think of.
Now the guy may still own his song, but American Idol certainly under the waiver has the rights to use the footage they shot, in any way they want, for as long as they want.
@ MHB
Em-B, when I worked as a manager in the music/entertainment industry, there is a standard performance waiver contract in the broadcast industry. It covers all sorts of rights to the song’s performance and the “replay” rights of the song/performance under strict guidelines for the producing show featuring the performance. BMI and ASCAP are the governing bodies for these issues.
That agreement may be customized under certain expectations by AI’s production company, owned by Simon Fuller, 19 Entertainment. However, what I’m pretty sure was NOT allowed in the performance agreement was that 19 Entertainment nor its subsidiaries or officers could OWN the creative songs the performers on AI sang. No performer, whether a band, singer, musician, comedian who provided original content would perform on any show and giving them all rights to do what they want with the “creative copyright” of the material itself. Only the performance in the show’s medium would be allowed to be used.
I don’t know what the agreement was either. Maybe AI bought the rights to the song already, so they would have every right to the domain. But this is unlikely, seeing that they really couldn’t know if that song would become a “hit”.
It’s hard to make that determination without seeing the contract between the songwriter/performer of “Pants on The Ground” and 19 Entertainment (AI).
The only warning we can give the old guy who sang it is a “heads up”, that AI has registered the name of his song.
I still think this is one of the most interesting articles you’ve written about domains… because it’s such a “left field” question of ownership rights regarding a domain name, a simple song, and a major entertainment production company.