"Blank James" Gifford

Site proprietor & lead archivist

It is my intention to maintain this site and its contents in perpetuity, as a permanent addition to the online infobanks. If you're a fan of Max or have other interests in the material here, do drop me a line at BigTimeTV@MaxHeadroom.com. (Note that this is a disposable public contact address that may be changed from time to time to divert spam.)

I strongly encourage linking to this site, but I would prefer that you follow a few rules:

• Link to the home page. This is the best, most stable and most preferable option.
• If you must link to content, link no deeper than the major index pages (those that are linked directly from the home page).
• Linking to deeper pages may result in broken links as the site is reorganized and updated from time to time. The major index pages will be maintained and be much more stable entry points.
• Please do not link to any image or media files here. I do monitor file-level traffic and will follow up on such links. You won't like it.
• I will consider mirroring and off-site copying of this material when a justification is given. However, please don't steal stuff from here. You'll just force me to send Max after your hard drive - and I don't care what firewall and antivirus stuff you're running, you know he'll get in.

It is my intention to respect intellectual property ownership and copyright, and I ask all site visitors and Max fans to do the same. I realize that there is no small irony in staking out this position, given the nature and topic of this site, and the fact that being a site it is part of the "World Wide Wipoff." But I'm serious.

There is a lot of Max-related material here, but I believe I've stayed within fair use rules - not that I'd want to pull out a ruler and measure things precisely. I do know that I've received no complaints from anyone who was involved with any of the various properties - and I am in communication with quite a few of them, including two of the major rights owners. Should anyone make a legitimate objection, I will take it into consideration. (I'll also point out the that the Wipoff, er, Web is absolutely jammed with commercial theft of Max material... so maybe throttling this legitimately scholarly site is not the place to start with such efforts.)

Ownership and control of the various rights and properties that make up "Max Headroom" is a murky muddle. The only clear (but partial) owner is a UK media consortium that bought up all rights to what was created and produced by Chrysalis Productions, for Channel Four and other end users. This group has been far more active in managing the property than Chrysalis had been for years. However, their ownership is only partial, and significant rights remain in the hands of Warner Brothers, who bought out the producer of the ABC series, Lorimar. WB has shown almost zero interest in the property other than to license the episodes to TechTV, Bravo and now In2TV. In addition to these two media titans, the original creator of Max is asserting ownership and control of the property - so we'll all have to stay tuned to see what happens. The UK consortium is aware of this site and has so far taken a benign view of it; WB has never made a comment nor responded to inquiries about the property or its use here; and Max's creator is aware of this site and has expressed admiration and support for it. My goal is to serve the best interest of Max fans and scholars while treading on none of these entities' toes. So far I have been successful.

I ask that Max fans and others also respect these owners' rights, and do nothing to further the piracy of the video, images, character etc. I thank you. Max thanks you. The minority of us on the web who understand copyright thank you.

All other aspects of this site, including design, organization, graphics, details and all original content, is copyright by me - as in ©2005-2007 James Gifford. I would appreciate users respecting my rights and ownership as well. (I will be very generous about usage as long as permission is asked and appropriate credit is given.)

Let's face it, Max Headroom deserves the most dazzling, state-of-the-art, cutting-edge, neo-cyberpunk web site in the universe.

But ;et's face this, too: such a web site would not only be huge labor in and of itself, and it would exclude all those who don't have this week's browser and plug-in releases, as well as those struggling along with last week's computer hardware. It would be a continual challenge to keep in fully working condition. The web is loaded with broken web sites whose spindizzies haven't been updated or patched to the newest standards. So... no, that's not the way.

My goal is to create an attractive, interesting and usable web site worthy of Max... but I also want it to be accessible and durable, and I don't want to spend time continually updating the technical "bones" lest it rot away like an abandoned boat. To achieve these goals, I deliberately chose a very simple technical plan for this web site - a CSS style sheet approach and animated GIF files are about the limit of the cutting edge here. No SSI, Shockwave, Java/script, nothing. (There are a few Javascript applets, but they are trivial and nonessential, and in no way affect the usability of the site.)

Base Font

My one conceit in the design is using a nonstandard font, OCR-A, for the text and headings. If you don't have it on your system, the site will be fully readable in your standard monospaced font, and most users probably won't even notice the difference. But for that final Maxxian gloss... make sure you have the font installed. You can find complete instructions, and a system font if you need it, here.

Compatibility

This site is developed under Firefox 2, which I regard as the finest general-purpose browser available. I also do a review of each page in IE7 before uploading each revision, but do not test every feature. The simplicity of the design means that not much is likely to be nonfunctional in any reasonably current browser if it passes these two tests. Please do report any incompatibilities you encounter.

First and foremost thanks go to Mike Larson, owner and proprietor of this site for many years. Mike kept a pretty decent site here for a long time, then fended off inappropriate buyers out of a sense that the coolest domain on the net deserved better. Thanks, Mike, for taking care of this domain and for passing it along. (Mike, if you stop by any time soon, ping me with your updated email address!)

Second up are the members of the original Max Headroom creative team who have taken, and continue to take time to answer my endless questions about long-ago details and decisions. Thanks to these Blanks, I have fewer blanks in the material here. I hope to credit many of them by name in future revisions.

Thanks to Garry Trudeau and Universal Press Syndicate for permission to include the two Doonesbury strips.

I try to credit contributors right alongside their contributions, but specific thanks to BlankMike, BlankChrissy and rakerlucas for some important content they sent my way.

Thanks to Peter Scott for the code that went into the "MaxClock" on the home page.