Slashdot Mirror
Superbowling
An assortment of Super Bowl tidbits: Supposedly sports gambling sites are being threatened with denial of service attacks if they don't pay protection money - also a Reuters story. Infinitus writes "The NFL's legal firm has a PDF up that outlines the NFL's intellectual property rights to words like 'Super Bowl' and 'NFL'. Including a neat little chart that tells you what you can and can't say..." VeggiePossum23 writes "Panthers Upset Patriots, 29 to 21... at least in the Sony Sponsored '989 Sports Game Before the Game' played on NFL Gameday 2004 on the PS2 Console. This annual event, held Wednesday night in Houston, has a perfect 8-year track record of picking the winner of the Super Bowl. Carolina Panthers Wide Receiver Steve Smith controlled the Panthers, winning an upset victory against New England Patriots' Wide Out Troy Brown, also controlling his own team." lordbyron writes "CBS is doing a SuperBowl of commercials that will include a vote for the best commercial in history. You can watch the top 10 now and make sure that you vote at 9pm on Sunday 1/31. It includes some classics like the Apple commercial and the exploding mosquitos from Tabasco."Wing Bowl.--->
Here in Los Angeles, KROQ is doing a "Super Bowl" contest where they send someone to the "Super Bowl" game, but they cannot call it the "Super Bowl" becuase of the NFL restriction. So they are referring to it as the "Big Game". It would cost them an insane amount of money to call it the "Super Bowl Contests" and its ridiculous. This whole trademark BS is so stupid sometimes. How can we live in a age where you cant refer to something by its official name without paying money??? I read slashdot all the time and I am so disgusted by the crap going on around us, what IS this world coming to?
Mario
stainless steel
If that was true then CBS certainly would not run the white house ad that connects marijuana users to terrorism. but that is exactly that they are doing.
Sure, laugh at how not intellectual football is. Heck, it's as simple as:
From Youth Football knowledge base
Simple, right?
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
Do this for 8 years and four of your friends thinks you are a genius and the remaining 1020 have forgotten the whole thing.
This works with stock tips and is a scam that has been used for ages.
Help fight continental drift.
It is amazing how many people do not understand what censorship actually means.
Sad really
I guess it is now censorship when a corporation decided not to play an ad that would piss off the majority of the country
Just like it is censorship when the public decides to not boycott a movie/tv show because the ignorant actor/actress made some boneheaded statements about their assinine political views.
Oh, and we cannot forget book publishers not publishing books that contain views they don't like. Obviously this is censorship, and not a business decision.
Finkployd
A few notes on this ... if you haven't seen the MoveOn Child's Pay ad, it's not exactly incendiary rhetoric. Even Bill O'Reilly said he was surprised they refused to play it.
CBS defends the policy by saying that if they allowed issue ads, large corporations could buy time to push their favorite issues and it would disenfranchise us folks with smaller ad budgets. Eli Pariser of MoveOn responded by pointing out that this creates an awfully friendly environment for the status quo, and those same corporations. We have oil company ads but no anti-oil ads, shoe company ads but no sweatshop ads, drug war ads but no decriminalization ads.
What we're really getting here is a one-sided agenda, and, yes, censorship, in the guise of fairness.
I'd love to see this stuff hold up in court. Has it before? I doubt it.
It is perfectly legal (and EXPLICITLY legal) to use trademarks in news and mention as long as they don't cause brand confusion.
Also, the use of copyrights to protect news is not legal. No one is allowed to rebroadcast the the coverage of the game verbatim, but nothing prevents someone from relaying the general events from the game. This is in the First Amendment, and there are no exceptions.
--CBS is making a smart business decision not to air this ad. Why should CBS want to bring in unneeded controversy into the Super Bowl that would distract from the game? Since it has a product that is in high demand for advertisers, CBS can pick and choose which advertisers it wants to fill in those 30 second gaps between plays. Also, if you are spending $2 million an ad as advertiser would you want your commercial message to be drowned out by adjacent partisan political message? Heck no! This would make it hard for CBS to sell the ad space next to the MoveOn ad.
This isn't political censorship, its smart business on the part of CBS.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
A corporation not playing an ad because of its political viewpoints is censorship. It's their right, and it's perfectly legal (unless you want to get into some argument about the "public" airwaves), but it's still censorship. Besides nothing in that ad is at all controversial - the deficit estimate is even a bit low, according to the Congressional Budget Office. If they're gonna air ads from the White House (containing some very shaky statements about drugs and terrorism), they should air this ad (which doesn't even promote a candidate).
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
First the NFL says NO to ads for Las Vegas during the superbowl. Then CBS says NO to ads against Bush during the game. The NFL says NO WAY to Casinos in las vegas showing the game on anything bigger than a 55" TV. They say its copyright law, but last I checked copyright law didnt say anything about TV Size. Its just the NFL's arbitrary size. The Palms was planning to show it on their huge movie theater screens. Oh well, I guess the NFL doesnt like its superbowl party being upstaged by Vegas. Now they're just taking their ball and going back to Houston. Paul Tagliabue caused lots of casinos to lose lots of money because of the NFL's childlike behavior. Hello, only so many people can go to the game! What are the rest supposed to do, wait outside and be happy they're near the game?? Paul also threatened the players with fines or possibly suspensions for "excessive celebration" during the Superbowl.
The NFL is definately the No Fun League.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
The right decision would have been not to allow policital ads at all. By airing an ad from the whitehouse, which I paid for (and I would much prefer that the money be used for education instead of fucking superbowl ads), they have basically dumped politics into the superbowl. They should either remove all the politics (arguably the wise choice) or allow everyone to advertise. Again, I agree that the superbowl should be an all-fun event. Politics and fun don't mix well. But they have clearly chosen sides, and that has already taken some of the fun out of it.
Obviously, Clinton wasn't a perfect president (such a thing has never existed). I disagree with him on plenty of issues (blowjobs, for one). But against a president to whom "getting things done" means giving away money to the wealthy, when we're already spending it faster than we're making it, I'd take Clinton any day.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.