5 Reasons to Be Thankful When 'Glee' Robs You Blind

See, we didn't think our plan was that hard to understand. It's not like we didn't use the most bargain basement PR device in the Fox arsenal. Here, let us lay this out for you as simply as we can. Without looking it up, can you tell us who wrote the script for the Glee episode in question? Of course you can't, because no sane person reads credits. That's a terrible place to give an artist attribution. If you really want to give someone exposure for their work, you have to start an Internet riot, and from the looks of things, we pulled that off pretty handily.

Via Jonathan Coulton's Twitter

It's pretty easy to set up, when you think about it. We steal your song and make it as obvious as humanly possible. Then we verbally give you the finger by telling you that you should be thanking us for it, knowing that you'll relay that message to your fans. Predictably, they get super heated, and we respond to their outcries with cold, dead silence, igniting their anger like flipping the NOS switch in an insultingly stupid fictional street race. Except in this case, our race car is exposure. The ensuing outrage gives the illusion of sparked interest on the Net, which prompts large sites like Wired.com, CNN, and Forbes to report on the injustice. And just like that, you're on the lips of every entertainment blog on the Internet, baby. Just like we planned it.

Via iTunes Twitter

Oh, don't act surprised. You've seen our news shows. You know that the way we acquire ratings is by promoting anger and outrage. This has been our business model at its very core for years, and it absolutely works.

But do you thank us? No, you run to your precious lawyers. You vilify us. You make us out to be the bad guys. It's like getting a PS3 for Christmas and then suing your parents because they stole your song and didn't give you credit. Sorry, our analogy guy is on vacation. The point is, you're being an asshole, and you need to knock it off. Be the bigger man, Jonathan, and thank us for the exposure we're graciously bestowing upon you. You can send your thanks to askfox@fox.com.

Via Fox.com

Fact: Everyone on the Internet steals music. We should know, we're members of the RIAA. We've been battling song thieves for years, and we're no closer to a solution now than we were when we had Lars Ulrich poking his head out of our zippers and testifying like a ventriloquist penis act. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and what better way is there to connect with the music-stealing gangs of the Internet than to become one of them?

It's like when Jesus associated himself with murderers and prostitutes and Jews. He did that because the innocent, God-fearing people of the world didn't need to be converted. Just the assholes did. So in stealing your song so blatantly and remorselessly, we, like Jesus, have associated ourselves with the worst of the Internet. We have waded into the scum-laden pond of sin, and we are baptizing the masses. Soon they will be converted into upstanding, music-buying children of Glee.

Look, we're not trying to sound holier than thou on this matter. We're just saying that we are Jesus. And we're just trying to cleanse the music-Jews of the world. Is that really so wrong? Don't be the devil in this story, Jonathan. Let us do our work in peace. The Lord's work.

Yes, we are selling our exact 100 percent ripoff of your music on iTunes, and yes, we will profit heavily from it. And no, we will not give you credit for it under any circumstance. But isn't this industry about sacrifice and sharing? Whatever happened to the times when a large, above-the-law production could steal music from an independent artist, make millions of dollars from that song, and then tell the original musician to go fuck himself without consequence?

Getty

Don't be selfish, Mr. Coulton. You had your fun, rewriting Sir Mix-A-Lot's song about butts into a hilarious acoustic masterpiece. Don't you think it's time you let someone else have a turn copying and pasting that song into their own production and pretending that they created it? You can email your apology to askfox@fox.com.

If you have stereo speakers, that's Glee coming out of the left and Coulton on the right, playing at the same time.

Unfortunately for you, that's the law, buddy, and it cares nothing for morals. We did the same exact thing to Greg Laswell's version of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," and you don't hear him complaining. Given, it's mostly because he doesn't have as big of an Internet following as you, but we like to think that it's also because he is grateful for us recognizing his work and showing him how good we think he is by duplicating it down to the millisecond.

Do you hear Nouvelle Vague complaining that we completely ripped off their version of "Dancing With Myself"? We're not actually sure about that one because we don't really read the news. But the point is that we've done this many times, and we've never gotten in trouble for it, so we're just going to keep on doing it until someone makes a law to prevent us from full-on stealing other people's work. It's like when you read in those old books about pilgrims and prairie settlers getting married and having kids at the age of 14. If we as a country had never made laws against it, we here at Fox would still be fucking teenagers. So you see, we're doing America a service by being completely unethical cocksuckers until we force the government to force us to change.

Getty

You're welcome, assholes. You can thank us properly at askfox@fox.com.

No, we did it because we respect you as an artist, and we love your work. And we wanted to pay homage by showing you what it sounds like when someone else replaces your vocals. We wanted to show you how much money you could make by selling that song on iTunes if you just put your mind and the power of a large, untouchable conglomerate to it. We are just looking out for your best interests, and quite frankly, you're kind of being a little bitch about it.

But you can rectify that at any time by contacting our comments and complaints department at askfox@fox.com and coming clean. Don't live with the guilt of being wrong, buddy. We are forgiving -- all you have to do is ask for it.

Getty

Hey, if you didn't want your song stolen, you should never have written such a stealable song. Seriously, listen to it -- it's beautifully constructed. Everything about it just screams "Steal me and profit from it!" Would you rather it had been taken by some knockoff show like Acting Out? Or would you rather have it stolen by a show that can get you this level of buzz simply by fucking you over in such an obvious manner, completely devoid of ethics or class?

To us, the choice is obvious. If we were in your shoes, we'd rather have our own work stolen by us so we could give it the most exposure. No, we didn't come to you and request to do the song, but you knew it was inevitable that we'd use it, right? If anything, you should have come to us. It's your own fault for sitting around and just waiting for things to happen. That's not how successful people operate, Jonathan.

Getty

You don't sit around your house, smoking the reefer cigarettes and playing video games, waiting for someone to discover you. You get up off your ass and you seek out your fame. That's what we expected to happen, because we thought you were the type of guy who had initiative and drive. So when you never showed up at our offices to ask us if we could use your song, we just assumed (probably correctly) that you were slacking. You do have a beard, after all.

So as far as we're concerned, you owe us an apology. For our pain and suffering, as well as the tidal wave of angry feedback we've gotten at askfox@fox.com from your fans. We demand that you take down your cover of our cover of your cover on iTunes and forward us all of the money that you're giving to charity from those proceeds.

Getty

But please don't let any of this discourage you. We definitely want to encourage you and all independent artists to continue writing more covers, because ... well, let's face it, our show isn't so much a "show" as it is an iTunes factory with a half-assed, slapped-together script to justify it being on TV. Take away the constant stream of hit singles and they'd cancel us in a heartbeat. The faster you independent artists give us prepackaged arrangements, the faster we can get that fucker up in online MP3 stores and show our executives what a great job we're doing.

We eagerly await your apology at askfox@fox.com.

John has a Twitter and a Facebook fan page where he regularly demands apologies for things that nobody did. Any complaints about this article can be sent to John's personal email address.