Streaming Cartoon Fun!

April 19, 2005 10:55 PM

Cartoon Fridge has streaming episodes of the Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama, and King of the Hill, among others. They have quite a comprehensive listing of shows, (The Simpsons has all the episodes up to Season 12) and if you're on broadband, they load pretty fast. Mozilla and Opera supported as well!
posted by banished (50 comments total)

[This is so good!]
posted by Lush at 11:05 PM on April 19, 2005

1. This is awesome.
That said...
2. Streaming video will probably stay bad for another 2500 years or so.
3. Who wants to count the minutes until this gets shut down? These episodes cost millions to license. I don't think they're going to get that from the donation button. Their flimsy legal notice probably won't hold up for long.
4. Still awesome.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:12 PM on April 19, 2005

From the legal notice on the main page:

If you wish to be a viewer of this website you must meet the following requirements before you watch,
1) You own the program(s) on DVD/Other legally obtained form of media.
2) You receive a cable/satellite/antenna feed with the program(s)

From the first line of the "Info" section:

Cartoon-Fridge.com is about keeping the toons alive for those without the cable tv, satallite tv, and can't afford the DVD's.

Now that's what I call legal prowess...
posted by unsupervised at 11:13 PM on April 19, 2005

Wow. This won't last long. Pretty great, though.
posted by deafmute at 11:15 PM on April 19, 2005

No worky on a mac, as far as I can tell.
posted by Phatty Lumpkin at 11:17 PM on April 19, 2005

Too good to last. The minute it hits fark or slashdot, the servers will evaporate like a doily in a nuclear fireball. Plus, the lawyers will probably have it down within a week, once it shows up on their radar.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:18 PM on April 19, 2005

Is searching for a non-existant plugin for my firefox..
posted by Balisong at 11:20 PM on April 19, 2005

Did you miss the big, obvious link to the firefox plugin right on the main page?
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:21 PM on April 19, 2005

I did, and then used it, and it still gives the same error..
posted by Balisong at 11:34 PM on April 19, 2005

That's odd, it works over here (but the buttons that stop, pause, etc. don't.) What kind of error?
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:37 PM on April 19, 2005

Additional plugins are required to play all media aplications [click here to install plugins]
Then..

No plugins are available at this time
posted by Balisong at 11:41 PM on April 19, 2005

Dang, I need to see some of those Venture Bros episodes!
posted by Balisong at 11:42 PM on April 19, 2005

Aw, I was hoping for a second that this was licensed. Not that I mind downloading television, but it continues to baffle me that no one has begun streaming shows like this, with commercials, online. With distributed file sharing technology, it would cost virtually nothing, just pure ad revenue.
posted by Simon! at 11:44 PM on April 19, 2005

I think realiable distributed streaming might just be a bit more of a technical challenge than file-sharing is, Simon(!). Maybe not insurmountable, and for all I know it already exists, but it would seem on the face of it to be a much harder thing to achieve.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:55 PM on April 19, 2005

Call me paranoid but this "http://www.cartoon-fridge.com/cartoonfridgeFirefoxSetup.exe" looks like a quite dangerous place to click. Opera has an executable too and Explorer a ActiveX. Looks too much like unprotected anonymous sex for me.
posted by nkyad at 11:57 PM on April 19, 2005

Simon!... exactly... the cat is out of the bag, people are going to distribute movies and music no matter what. In the process of filesharing, a few smart, technologically-aware individuals will strip out their DRM and their ads... and then all the people downloading will have those DRM stripped, ad free copies. Instead of clinging to their old business model, why not release all media on the web and support it through advertising or low fees. People will pay a for convenience, Itunes has proved this. People are lazy, if FOX distributed full quality Simpsons episodes via bit torrent with ads, the majority of people would be too lazy to strip them out. (Although most people wouldn't know of bit torrent either, but common! Integrate it into the browser or something)
posted by banished at 12:00 AM on April 20, 2005

Brilliant thanks........
posted by kenaman at 12:19 AM on April 20, 2005

This is totally illegal. The idea that if you own or have legal access to copyrighted content from one media it is legal to access it in another has been solidly and unambiguously smashed in the courts. I fear these poor fools are about to get their nuts thoroughly viced by some of the meanest bitches in the media megopoly.
posted by nanojath at 1:21 AM on April 20, 2005

But until then, awesome!
posted by TwelveTwo at 1:51 AM on April 20, 2005

Or alternatively, you could just download all the series yourself in a week, tops. Then you can watch them whenever you feel like it, and it won't require installing some suspiscious, untrusted app. Why do people insist on doing things the hard, dangerous way?
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 3:12 AM on April 20, 2005

Viewing the site thru MISE 6, and I don't know if I want to download the Nullsoft plugin from AOL....AOL????
posted by alumshubby at 4:08 AM on April 20, 2005

AOL owns Nullsoft!
posted by trey at 4:46 AM on April 20, 2005

Nullsoft's had until recently a paragraph about how much they liked smoking ganja in the stables of their communal pet donkey.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:04 AM on April 20, 2005

I mean llama, obviously. Presumably ass-whipped.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:06 AM on April 20, 2005

Or alternatively, you could just download all the series yourself in a week, tops.

How would you go about doing this? All my attempts at right-clickery have failed on this site.
posted by afroblanca at 5:07 AM on April 20, 2005

I'm actually afraid to go and get food because the site will probably be shut down by the time I return.

on preview: try these
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:11 AM on April 20, 2005

i pay 5$ a month to every show sucks (ESS) to watch their network of streaming channels on WinampTV from home and work.

some of you might scoff at paying for the service, but i pay about $20 for cable television that i only watch 1 hour a week (and I watch 24 during that hour, which is on a major network channel.). i watch the ESS shows maybe 7 hours a week.

their channels include 24/7 streams of xfiles, family guy, scrubs, red dwarf, arrested development, and many others. they have 21 channels.

other than a forum membership where i sometimes request they add shows to their lineup, i am not affiliated with them whatsoever.
posted by lotsofno at 5:15 AM on April 20, 2005

Well I gave them $10 for the server-bomb/legal-doom to come because of the attention they're bound to get from this wonderful blog.

Thanks!!!!
posted by phylum sinter at 5:16 AM on April 20, 2005

Cartoon Fridge will last about as long as Capitol Critters did. "Hello, Cease and Desist on line two."
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 5:18 AM on April 20, 2005

Also similar but probably completely legal: Channel101 - be sure to check out House of Cosbys.
posted by phylum sinter at 5:18 AM on April 20, 2005

A: there is nothing legal about this. no doubt about it.

but B: I guess I'm calling out sick again... great... hello Bart.
posted by RightsaidFRED at 5:50 AM on April 20, 2005

I've just kissed Ren and Stimpy.
Happiness is a sack of Gritty Kitty Litter.
posted by NinjaPirate at 6:31 AM on April 20, 2005

I would love that site if I could play the shows but its not mac-friendly. Too bad. I would also be willing to pay to see only the shows I want instead of paying for cable and getting piles of shows I will never watch.
posted by LunaticFringe at 6:42 AM on April 20, 2005

Ever see a man say goodbye to a shoe?

Thisrocks!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:42 AM on April 20, 2005

Ever see a man say goodbye to a shoe?

Yes, once.
posted by Servo5678 at 7:03 AM on April 20, 2005

The idea that if you own or have legal access to copyrighted content from one media it is legal to access it in another has been solidly and unambiguously smashed in the courts.

Please provide the data which supports this idea.
posted by rough ashlar at 7:04 AM on April 20, 2005

How would you go about doing this? All my attempts at right-clickery have failed on this site.

I wasn't talking about downloading the videos from their site.
Ah-fucking-hem.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:29 AM on April 20, 2005

The idea that if you own or have legal access to copyrighted content from one media it is legal to access it in another has been solidly and unambiguously smashed in the courts.

Actually, in the recent Supreme Court oral arguments for MGM v. Grokster, the record companies flat-out admitted that if you owned a CD, then ripping that CD onto another media would be covered by the fair use doctrine, and would thus be legal.
posted by gd779 at 7:32 AM on April 20, 2005

I ? Family Guy. Thanks banished.
posted by debralee at 8:53 AM on April 20, 2005

If the site was in Russia, no-one could shut it down. Their copyright law does not apply to "digital media", according to the courts.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 10:10 AM on April 20, 2005

I ? debralee.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 10:10 AM on April 20, 2005

Channel101
is as funny as most cartoons on TV. (Most.)

If the site was in Russia, no-one could shut it down
except WIPO, I think. That's why countries are making treaties to extradite international intellectual property rights violators. It sucks, but that's how it goes.
posted by NickDouglas at 1:15 PM on April 20, 2005

And the site's down now. They're being blasted and can't handle it. They're going membership-only, they say, and are going to add banners.
posted by papercake at 1:27 PM on April 20, 2005

Dumb question: When I go all I see is a bunch of comments... how do you get to the cartoons? Little help?
posted by mowglisambo at 2:28 PM on April 20, 2005

mowglisambo: It's down. From the forum:

Were mirroring our website now. In order to have the mirror finish sometime this week we've disabled toon viewing. We should have loads of new bandwidth available for all the new visitors this evening when the site is put back online.

Thanks for understanding.
posted by Ljubljana at 2:36 PM on April 20, 2005

Downloaded the plugin earlier before the site went down. Just checked it out and AVG came up with the ISTBAR trojan/virus. Came across this little bastard before. If it gets on your machine there is a tool here that might help you out.
posted by The Gurrier at 3:18 PM on April 20, 2005

gd779 - maybe I stated this poorly. Reversioning your owned content to other media is okay... so I can rip CDs to MP3s or record teevee to my VCR or DVR... but I can't legally go and get, say, the MP3 of a song I own on a CD from a file-sharing site. It is illegal for them to provide it and it is illegal for me to receive it. It is unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyrighted material. My ownership of an legal copy of the copyright in question is not relevant. It is particularly ridiculous for this site to suggest that because you have access to these programs on your television service, you have a legal right to access copies of them from a distinct source. This is equivalent to saying because you own a radio you have the right to download popular songs through Kazaa. In a day and age when average individuals are getting hit with significant legal attacks for downloading infringing content from the internet, it is irresponsible to suggest that this it is legal under any circumstances to download this copyrighted content from this site. It is illegal under all circumstances. It is illegal for them to provide it and it is illegal to receive it. There is no question about this whatsoever.
posted by nanojath at 8:51 PM on April 20, 2005

It is illegal under all circumstances. It is illegal for them to provide it and it is illegal to receive it. There is no question about this whatsoever

you're not a lawyer, are you? Though this is emphatically not legal advice, the issue just isn't that clear. If I can burn a copy of a CD I own onto my hard drive, why can't I download a copy of that same CD onto that same hard drive? A lot of these issues are ever-changing, especially in light of the fact that the Supreme Court hasn't handed down their decision in the Grokster case, which could change quite a bit of the law.
posted by gd779 at 3:35 PM on April 21, 2005

no I'm not a lawyer, gd779, so probably I shouldn't be so absolutist, but I really don't think there's much wiggle room on this one - i think the MP3.com vs UMG addressed this exact issue and I don't see that the Grokster case is relevant at all. As I understand it, it is only addressing whether file sharing programs and companies that promulgate file sharing networks have liability for copyright infringing uses of the technology. If you have any information suggesting it is in any way broadening the legal definition of what is and is not infringing I'd like to see it.

If I can burn a copy of a CD I own onto my hard drive, why can't I download a copy of that same CD onto that same hard drive?

Whether you should or should not have the right, I maintain the MP3.com case clearly laid down the precedent that nobody except the copyright holder has the right to duplicate or distribute the information to you. So it is a moot point. Unless a copyright owner provides downloadable content to you as an adjunct to a purchase any reversioning of music you own has to originate from the original licensed copy of the information in question.

Sure, I could be wrong. Be this as it may, there is no question in my mind that what "Cartoon Fridge" is doing is illegal, that the "fundamental right as a consumer" they describe as a justification of their service is an invention without legal weight and that they will get shut down without much ado in the very near future.
posted by nanojath at 10:55 PM on April 22, 2005

Looks like they decided they were not on solid enough legal footing to continue. Probably wise. Their quest to get true legal permission is quixotic but laudable.

http://www.cartoon-fridge.com/
posted by nanojath at 12:50 AM on April 24, 2005