Slashdot Mirror
English Premier Football League Sues YouTube
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is reporting that the English Premier Football League has launched a lawsuit against YouTube and its owner Google, claiming unspecified damages. The league is sitting on high-profile content valued at $5.4 billion over the next 3 years in a recent series of auctions. This will be the second major suit against YouTube since Google's purchase."
somebody give this guy a lollipop or something. please.
As a big soccer/football fan myself (forza juventus!) sometimes YouTube is the only way I can watch the premiership or international football games in the US. None of the major networks broadcast it, it's rarely if ever available on cable, and it's impossible to find games on the internet. Except YouTube, people often upload it in segments. Maybe if there was a way to watch it online for cheap (or ad-supported) we wouldn't have to resort to watching on YouTube...but as of now for 90%+ of Americans, that is the only way to watch.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A number of us have been saying for years that sooner or later people will stand up and refuse to obey unjust laws.
We've made the claim that copyright is just such an unjust law.
The last few years we've seen it actually happening. We dipped our toes in with music sharing, but it was too hot, so we went back to the shadows. The so-called Pirate Party grows stronger. Now there's YouTube/Google.
The silent majority of us ignore these laws. Now there's a vocal minority who are saying enough is enough.
I think this issue has finally come of age.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Better than dressing up like an ape cause you can't take a hit or two without padding and helmet.
Hang on, what the fuck, I'm participating in a conversation about football codes?
Who just typed that?
How we know is more important than what we know.
youtube has in the past responded to take downs without doing any fact checking and in this case it seems that the material would have been taken off immediately had they had such a notice- instead as far as I can tell the company just sued youtube without such notice. now aside from that, what is youtube being expected to do to prevent any and all copyrighted works from being submitted illegally? are they still working on that unique identification system? if so it hardly seems like they're intentionally profiting from the whole thing
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Yes, you can. That's what professional wrestling is for.
Just rambling here but isn't it interesting, YouTube sits there for years without any major lawsuits that I remember and then a large multi million dollar company buys it and suddenly companies are suing it...makes you wonder if they're really that disturbed about their content or if they simply want a quick buck...
But, a little more on topic, YouTube's response is just silly, threatening the internet? Is this supposed to become the tech people's "Think of the Children" meme? No offense but if YouTube goes down the internet won't be affected at all. However the accusation is also silly, YouTube pushing football (non-American) in order to raise it's profile. YouTube needs a bigger profile? I mean, is there really any person with internet access for the last couple years, or who simply watches the news, who doesn't know about YouTube?
As for the copyright issues wasn't there some law that said that people posting to a site (text) were responsible for their posts, not the hosting company? I may be wrong about that but if there was such a law would not this fall under it?
Oh well, it's not like YouTube is going down...and even if it did everyone knows that something would come up to replace it...probably a site with less regard for copyright law...you can't stop people from sharing things by making it hard on the places where people share, all that does is make people go to the less reputable places and then you have an even harder time stopping them. Better to let them share on a site like YouTube, where the worst offenders can be stopped, rather than sending the traffic to a site that would make it impossible to stop anything like this.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
Youtube is basically Copyright Infringement Central.
that Sioux City was just a small town in Iowa made famous by a crashing airliner.
Sookie, Sookie, Sookie, Sookie, Sookie, Sookie, Sue !
Oh...James...
What?
If you squint really hard, you might actually be able to see a sport in between the commercials.
Google's got far too much invested in YouTube and way too much at stake overall to allow a steady stream of high profile, potentially extremely costly lawsuits to continue. So I bet they and their YouTube folks are working hard on a technical solution that would provide enough upfront screening/checking to drastically reduce the amount of copyrighted material that wound up posted on either YouTube or Google Video (which would strengthen their legal basis for defending against any lawsuits). They are also likely to redouble their efforts to strike marketing deals with all the major content providers to head things off at the pass as much as possible, and to of course find new ways to contribute to their bottom line. Should be very interesting to see how all this plays out.
Sure, it takes money to produce it. Once it is produced, however, it can be duplicated ad infinitum at zero cost.
The fact that it takes money to produce does not justify limiting the freedoms of all computer-owners on the planet. They paid good money for their hardware, and they should be free to make full use of its features. This includes duplicating the data to which they have been given access.
Having expended your resources to produce some bit of information does not give you a *moral* right to control what everyone else in the world does with that information. Just because it was expensive doesn't mean you can then use it to justify robbing billions of people of their freedoms. Morally speaking, data duplication is in the clear.
The economic justification is that this unrealistic level of control over all the hardware in the world is necessary in order to ensure that such works are still created in the future. That is bunk, it has been proven so both in theory and in practice (Here are some examples).
So, the notion that data duplication is morally wrong and economically harmful just doesn't stand up to criticism. Like it or not, the bottom line is simple: you simply cannot give people access to information and yet control what they do with it. The misguided laws that try to do just that harm the many for the needless benefit of the few, and hence they are unjust. The world must adapt to the abundance that new technology has brought.
if youtube doesn't pay up, they may receive a nasty head-butt.
BBC is reporting that the English Premier Football League has launched a lawsuit against YouTube and its owner Google
Does anyone have the link to the video on YouTube?
This isn't surprising. After all, if the Premier League (go Blue) won't let fans of the soccer video games use the logos to create the teams in the games (because inane licensing rules prevented them from being in there in the first place), then this isn't a much bigger step up. Way to not let fans across the pond see and enjoy your game.
Napalm is nature's toothpaste
Ah, soccer.
Where the advertisements kick a ball around.
The law against 'grand theft' is unjust as it places unnecessary restriction on actions that the public want to participate in, namely, auto theft.
It didn't start out as an unjust law. There was a time when so few people had the means to steal cars that it was acceptable for them to trade their right to steal cars to others as an incentive for them to manufacture more cars. This is no longer the case.
We all have the means to commit grand theft, and we all do it.
Freedom is more important than entertainment or even driving.
I've always assumed the majority of people downloading music or movies illegally are not really looking for FREE content, they are just looking for affordable/cheap content. The same people generally pay for internet access, right?
The content people are downloading (or viewing on YouTube) is usually not available online at any price, it's only on DVD, if at all, which is less convenient and is seen as overpriced. If people could download a legitimate, quality version of a song or movie for a reasonable fee (whatever one considers reasonable/affordable), it should eliminate the majority of this problem.
I don't think this issue should be framed as one of people demanding free content (I myself support copyright in general). It's more accurately an issue of cheap/affordable content that's available over the internet, versus overpriced content off-line.
For example, if you could download 1,000 songs legitimately for $25.00 tomorrow, it might reduce the number of people downloading the same content illegally more effectively than any other alternative.> My contribution to culture, however small, was done because I had the expectation of being able to trade that contribution for enough money to pay my rent, feed my kids, etc. If there was no expectation, you know what I would have done? Become a lawyer.
And mine was not. Is it less valuable? You do realize that there are other ways to make money from works of art and imagination (not mere "content" one might stuff into a box with a price tag), no? Or that something called the Renaissance happened outside the domain of copyright, no? You DO also realize that essentially ALL of your ideas are based on those of others, too, no? Otherwise, you'd have to write using only those words you had coined yourself. After all, while human thought, like water, originally shapes its own riverbed, ever after it flows down and is shaped by the same riverbed it first formed.
> One which was only secured for you by good people who made great sacrifices. And furthermore, freedom is not absolute. Your freedom is limited at the point where it stops someone else from being free.
Indeed. And when the only way to properly enforce copyright is to invade everyone's privacy and give some small group ultimate authority over everyone's PC, should not their right give way, particularly when it was a right created for the good of society?
> Slave owners quoted the bible to prove they had a "right" to own slaves. There are people who think their rights as parents extend to beating their kids unconscious and that the government arresting them for breaking a four-year-old's arm is a violation of their rights.
And ignored their obligation to free them all every 7th year during the Year of Jubilee, ignored that a "slave" was one who originally sold themselves (or was, alas, sold by their parents), not to mention a whole host of other limitations they found inconvenient. It's right that too often we see a right touted without ANY consideration for what gives rise to it, however. And here the point was NOT to give authors a right to profit, but instead to enrich culture. A goal that is almost if not entirely ignored by current copyright laws.
> You can proclaim all the "rights" you want. That doesn't mean they're legal, ethical, or moral.
Quite right. Copyright, as it exists now, can only rightfully be considered one of those three. It's no wonder then, that disrespect for it is continually mounting and will continue to mount until such time as the laws reflect something more real.
> There are people in Germany who no longer want laws prohibiting the Nazi party. There are CEOs who no longer want laws prohibiting insider trading. There are pedophiles who no longer want laws prohibiting the possession or distribution of child pornography.
Surely you know that by equating copyright infringement to Nazis and molesting children, you have long since undermined whatever point you were trying to make by abandoning reason wholesale in an attempt to demonize the opposition? Can you honestly find no better reasons to support copyright than "think of the children"? Yes, perhaps I am being glib with your response, but I cannot rightfully apprehend the sort of confusion that would prompt such an untoward comparison.
> Sadly, so are the numbers of Nazis, corrupt CEOs, and pedophiles. But growing numbers doesn't make be accept their causes, arguments, or criminal behavior, nor will they make me accept yours.
They are? Based on what do you suppose that these numbers are growing?
Now then, you say indeed that ad populum does not make a good moral system. I can agree with that, but the moral basis I use can only consider copyright infringement evil if it is ultimately hurtful to society. I do not find evidence of that, therefore I wish to see the law reformed into something which is good for society. Alas, I am not holding my breath.
But who am I kidding? You went to Godwin this discussion. I have to believe that you're just trolling, because you appeal only to emotion and not to reason.
I worked in a start-up where we were selling networking tools to the Feds and then later to the commercial world. The main funder of this, wanted to make it secure. When we obtained a different funder, he wanted it to be easy for somebody like MS to borrow our ideas (which some of my ideas have not made it out there) and hopefully code. Flat out, they said that they expected MS to be dumb enough to do so, and then they could sue.
I have a friend who has been a big supporter of Reading (his home town) for years. This season, Reading got into the Premier Division for the first time and my friend put up with the extra cost that was added to a season ticket in order to see the big teams play at the Reading home games. I can't remember the cost of the season ticket for the year but I'm sure it's in excess of £1000.
After all this, match start times are constantly changed in order to fit in with the televising schedule of Sky, car parking near the football ground is an absolutely extortionate price, you can't take alcohol into the stadium and the football strips are changed yearly in order to ensure the fans pay high prices annually for football shirts.
If we didn't have such a namby-pamby government in England, the trouble-making thugs would be weeded out and stopped from going to any games meaning that fans who can behave sensibly and control their alcohol intake could go and enjoy a game over a beer - perhaps even more families would go to matches also.
In years of supporting rugby (aside from it being a better game anyway!), I have never seen trouble between fans (there is always good natured piss-taking but never anything more) and you can enjoy a game with a beer or two. Plus tickets for the games are reasonably priced also.
I admire the devotion of many football supporters to their team of choice, but for most of them they allow that devotion to cloud their judgement and completely overlook the fact that they are being totally ripped off by everyone involved in football.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Google falls down holding its knee, his face looks like he is in agony. No wait, now hes up again 2 seconds later running at full speed.
The copyright act allows fair usage. This was interpreted in the past as an excerpt. One could for instance quote and attribute a passage from a book and this could even include pictures. To do so is not copyright infringement. A for instance of this is a critic or a book report. I would think a film trailer would fall into this category as well.
Dawns the Digital age and networks. Say one places one frame of a football game in each of millions of networked computers. Each frame can be noted as a quote and have proper attribution. Each frame can have an index number... say seconds into the game.
A cleaver app could simply download each frame individually from all the separate machines not as a torrent as currently defined... much more grainy. And said cleaver app could use the attribution information to stitch the game right back together. By doing so one would stay within the current legal interpretation of fair usage and at the same time totally subvert the copyright.
This would be no different than downloading a book where each character comes from a separate source. While this might sound screwy... the thing is it can be done and if legal it subverts copyright. But who is to say that 10 million people cannot excerpt from a published copyrighted work separate overlapping or non-overlapping segments? This would be like assigning a book review to a class and then if two students happen to excerpt the same passage or at least some of it - claiming they colluded and hence are guilty of copyright infringement. I think in a court of law one would have to charge a significant portion of the alleged perpetrators.
Then the question might be asked: Would it be legal to download all book reports and look at all excerpts and attempt to do an analysis of the amount of overlap and the distribution of the excepts over the entire book? In order to do this one would need to stitch the book back together from its pieces. I'm sure there is code to do this. I happen to know a chap who stitched the files off his hard drive back together using this technique after the partition resize was botched.
But let me ask... if we are talking about text as in a book then would it be copyright infringement if all of the letter "A"'s come from a small group of machines? What if one machine is programmed to hold only the 1st word or 1st letter of many different works and perhaps is programmed to do a statistical analysis of the usage frequency in position #1 across many types of books each identified by a book reference ID and a list of tags one might like to analyse over. Sound hookey or contrived? Of course. But is it legal research?
This ends up being nothing more than a linked list structure and it can be indexed and thus downloaded in parallel. Perhaps this is how torrents are put together.
The thing is that if _any_ excerpt is legal then everything in the area if infringement becomes increasingly gray as the sophistication increases. Well with Major Exceptions... the law also looks at the PURPOSE in mind. One can excerpt for a book report because the purpose of the excerpt is to support the book report. If 1 million people each write a book report and each use a different excerpt and their ultimate purpose is to subvert the authors copyright then the courts I think would find them guilty of infringement. However if 1 million people write a book report and have no intention of being able to put humpty dumpty back together again then they would not be guilty of infringement.
But what if Cleaver Programmer comes along and realises he can download all these said book reports and from them reconstruct humpty dumpty. Then is Cleaver Programmer guilty of infringement? Its a gray area. In a way yes. In a way no. Cleaver Programmer may for instance legally purchase the material and stitch it back together to illustrate it can be done. That would constitute Fair Usage. Cleaver Programmer for instance might be working on a PhD thesis on reconstruction technigues.
Isn't England a Loser Pays legal system? If English Football loses, it could cost them a pretty pence.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You do realize that there are other ways to make money from works of art and imagination (not mere "content" one might stuff into a box with a price tag), no? Or that something called the Renaissance happened outside the domain of copyright, no?
So you're saying that I should base my ability to make a living on patronage from merchant princes and the Catholic Church? That only the rich can and should be able to decide who produces art and what they produce? That's what happened during the Renaissance.
Modern technology means my choices of what I create (if I wish to create for a living, not just for the joy of creation) are limited not by what a small group of people who can afford a unique work wish to commission, but what I can make or find a mass market for.
But if I create something and then that market is allowed to copy my work freely without having to pay me, then my choices are once again limited to creation merely for the joy of creation or creation on commission for wealthy patrons who are under no obligation to share my work with the public.
A lot of Renaissance paintings, other than those commissioned as public art by churches and city governments, sat in castles and private homes for centuries until the long-distant descendants of the patrons donated or sold them to museums. It was only then that those works entered the public consciousness.
You're a poor student of history if you cite the Renaissance model as an ideal or even superior to the modern model. Far from ensuring the freedom of art, it locks it away in the homes and office buildings of the rich, and the general public is left with that art produced by artists not good or politic enough to enjoy patronage.
Start a happiness pandemic
First, it's not the modern age, it's the post-modern age.. we live in the greatest technological era ever to occur in human history. If you want a mass market, go build it, and use the power of that technology to find people who are willing to pay you to create, instead of trying to force people to pay you after you have already created.
Secondly, you'll note the person you are replying to will not reply. That's because you broke Godwin's Law.
Good night.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Creation? Innovation? It's a frigging football (soccer) match! It's not like the FA is a bunch of artists writing poems or whatever, it's a sport.
It's not being streamed live in competition with the live broadcast.
Football is an important part of a large part of the world's culture. It is unjust to lock it up behind copyright, that just doesn't make sense. Making it available after the fact doesn't diminish the advertising revenue (that's what this is about, revenue) of the live broadcast, there's plenty of demand for the live broadcast.
But once the match has been played, what's the problem with people being able to watch it?
This is a good example of the bad side of copyright, locking up public culture for fear of losing even a penny of corporate profit.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Good point! Maybe the Premiership should consider charging more for the advetising space on players' shirts, and those around the perimiter of the pitch (i.e field),given the extra viewers (read: customers) Youtube provides.
Indeed. And when the only way to properly enforce copyright is to invade everyone's privacy and give some small group ultimate authority over everyone's PC, should not their right give way, particularly when it was a right created for the good of society?
Why do you have to invade everyone's privacy and give some small group ultimate authority over everyone's PC? You accuse me of using extremes, then use them yourself.
Again, and for the last time... Copyright law is not perfect and gets abused. But you're going at it like if a concept is poorly implemented and gets abused, we should just chuck the whole thing instead of trying to fix it. You're looking at this as a black and white situation rather than one with shades of gray. A binary worldview is dangerous.
Do I think it sucks that WMA DRM music can't play on an iPod and AAC DRM music can't play on a non-iPod? Yes. Once you buy it, you should be able to play it on any player. But do I think the solution to that is to abolish copyright rather than abolishing DRM that limits fair use? No.
Do I think that once I've bought a movie on DVD, I should be able to back it up to a personal media server or another disc so when the original DVD I bought wears out or gets scratched, I can continue to enjoy the content I purchased? Of course. But should that be done via abolishing copyright altogether or abolishing stupid anti-copy protections? The latter.
When you abolish stupid copy protections and bad DRM, the potential for piracy goes up... and so should the penalty. But when you make it possible for people to actually enjoy the content they paid for, more people will pay for it.
My first post on this story was pointing out that the video content producers were approaching the problem of digital distribution with the same stupidity and narrow-mindedness that the music industry demonstrated as MP3 began to rise. Rather than respond to their customers with innovation, they responded with draconian measures to try to stifle innovation. And that creates binary thinkers like you, so pissed off about the draconian measures that they rail against the concept of copyright instead of railing against the poor implementation of the concept that allows the draconian measures.
There is a middle-ground. Copyright is not bad in and of itself. It is the current state of copyright law that is bad. That state needs to be changed. But if your method of changing it is to destroy it, you create an environment in which those who agree with you on many points must end up opposing you, because if you make this an argument with only two sides, you make it a choice of the lesser of two evils. And at least for me, anarchy is always the greater evil.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
I see a lot of people arguing that because copyright laws have been extended so much, they are unjust. I believe that's a faulty argument. The vast majority if copyright violation we're seeing today on the Internet... video, audio, software... is of material that is usually no more than a few decades old, and often only a few weeks old. If you believe copyright is okay for 25 years, you shouldn't be downloading the latest bittorrent of your favorite TV show or cracked software package.
I agree copyright has problems, and I've certainly violated them myself. But you have to see it from the creator's point of view.
The English Premier Leage are IMHO in the same league as the RIAA & SCO.
The premier league have taken and are taking more publicans to court for copyright violations over showing footie matches.
The crime that the publicans committed?
They legally purchased Premier League Matches from a legitimate TV station over Satellite. The source was based in anouther EU Country and had purchased the rights to show the matches. Under EU Rules every person is free to buy stuff from another country unhindered by governments etc unless the EU itself passes a law against it. In this case, no such law/ruling has been passed.
The premier league say they have the rights to control who sees the matches country by country.
So, if I live in a place close to a border with another country I can't legally watch premier league footie matches that ate broadcast by the country next door.
IANAL but IMHO this is against EU Rules and might fall fould of RICO laws in the USofA.
Why do I make the SCO analogy?
They sen out letters threatening legal action for violations which are probably legally pretty shaky.
So far the pub sued have caved in. Eventually they will sue one too many and the publican will take them to Europe where they will probably loose.
There is an equally silly situation in the USA. American Football. The controlling leagues claim to have total rights to everything associated with a match. from the list of who is playing to stopping you from reporting in a Blog that I watch the Redskins vs The Cowboys and think that the ruling by a ref at a crucial point in the 4th quarter was silly. Just record a match and look at the legalese in the broadcast. Other sports are the same. Apart from being against the 1st ammendment this just sucks.
The Billions of $,Euros, Yen, Pounds etc at stake in these sports today make these moves more and more predictable.
The premier leage is in total hock to Sky. Without their BILLIONS the league would be probably non existant. Who controls SKY?
The same family that controls FOX etc and wants to but the Wall St Journal. Need I say more?
Needless to say, I don't have cable or satellite TV. I refuse to pay silly prices for what is often total crap.
I prefer to watch my local Amateur Rugby League Team for FREE.
Well, being as how the whole social contract of copyright was established on the basis that:
1 - producers would produce items and were
free to declare a limited copyright (see fair use)
2 - society at a whole would donate to the
producers of copyrighted items the cost of enforcement
3 - in return the full and complete OWNERSHIP of the
items would in return default to the PUBLIC
4 - the period at which this transfer of ownership was
(in the US) fixed at the creators life + 50 years
And that with no public agreement that period has been redefined
in 2 very serious ways (corporate ownership and period extension)
Would you agree that in return for OUR support of YOUR income, you will
meet all likely costs of GUARANTEEING availability and transfer of ownership?
DRM has destroyed this social contract, corporate ownership has also,
there are continuing attempts to undermine it for individuals through period
extensions. Why should we (society) not be free to renege on the whole social
contract? There will be noting stopping you from carrying the cost of protecting
YOUR ownership of YOUR content without our help...
I am curious - how would your idea apply to art (illustration, graphic design, etc)? I'm not so sure that alternate forms of payment would come up...
Real Men(tm) play Aussie Rules.
First, it's not the modern age, it's the post-modern age.. we live in the greatest technological era ever to occur in human history. If you want a mass market, go build it, and use the power of that technology to find people who are willing to pay you to create, instead of trying to force people to pay you after you have already created.
But they only have to pay me if they wish to use what I created. Someone brought up the concept of the chef. Let's extend it to the cafeteria or the "all you can eat" buffet. They don't cook to order. They make what they think you'll buy, make it in advance, and then put it out in trays. If you choose to dine in their establishment and eat their food, you have to pay them.
People only have to pay me after I've created if they eat the food I made. They can even come in, smell it, look at it, maybe get a small "taster" on a toothpick. If they decide they don't want to eat one of the 8,000 potato pancakes I made, then they don't have to buy it. But if they want to eat it, they have to pay for it.
Now they didn't ask me to make potato pancakes. They didn't pay me in advance. I invested my own money to make 8,000 potato pancakes because I thought I could sell them. I've already created the potato pancakes. Does the fact that I created them before someone said "may I have a potato pancake, please" mean that they're entitied to it for free?
Secondly, you'll note the person you are replying to will not reply. That's because you broke Godwin's Law.
I didn't vote for Godwin or his Law. And if you can ignore copyright as a limitation on your free speech, why can't I ignore Godwin as a limitation on mine?
Start a happiness pandemic
You bring up a good point. But when you state that the contract has been amended "with no public agreement" you invalidate the concept of representative democracy. It's like saying there was no public agreement to a tax cut or a tax increase and therefore you get to renege on the social contract of paying taxes. It doesn't work that way. Try it with the IRS.
The contract needs to be fixed, not scrapped. That's done through grass roots political action and public demonstrations of civil disobedience (i.e. standing up and being counted, not just breaking the law secretly). The HD-DVD hack incident on Digg forced them into an act of civil disobedience. If only as many people could get as excited about flooding Congress with protests as they got about flooding Digg with posts, they might actually change something. But if Digg has to stand alone and fight this out while all the users merely gripe in online forums, Digg's in for a bad time.
These social contracts are created to serve a public good. Until the social contract of copyright was amended to the detriment of the public, it served it. So why is the response to those amendments that the contract must be sacrificed entirely and the public good it served sacrificed? Why isn't the response an effort to remove the amendments and get back to where the contract was serving a public good? Why isn't Congress feeling the pressure that Digg felt?
Bring back good and reasonable "fair use" rules, shorten the period of personal copyright, outlaw DRM or make it a "DRM or copyright, but not both" choice, shorten the period of corporate copyright to 50 years only. I'm all for that. Copyright should be fair to creators and society.
Copyright needs to be fixed. The concept still serves a social good and that social good will be lost in some large part if it's scrapped instead of fixed.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
w00t
The NHL has its own channel on youtube, showing highlights of games, the top plays of the week and so forth.
There are lots of highlight videos from other sources as well, but no/ very few full games like there are for the premiership. Is there a link? Quite probably - why sit through a low-quality version of the full game when you can just as easily see all the interesting parts in the same quality much quicker?
Surely rugby ticket prices are lower because the cost of running teams are lower? I'm guessing there aren't any Chelsea -priced players in the Rugby Leagues? Chelsea seem to be happy spending 20-30 million UK sterling for a top player, what does a top player cost in Rugby Union?
I guess they are screwing the fans to get that sort of money back.
As a football fan I wish you the best of luck and hope that big money doesn't come Rugby's way and mess up your game. I watch League Two football (fourth level) and the game is still small enough that security is a few bored coppers and different entrances for the home and away stands.
Are we talking about the same Aussie Rules? Cross-country ballet? Where the aggression level is so high, the men sometimes -- gasp -- SHOVE each other?
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
There is no problem as long as someone paid for it. Unfortunately, the matches don't go into Public Domain after they have been played. The soccer leagues still own the broadcasting rights and licence them. The highlights you watch in the news, the analysis in your favorite sports show, reruns of complete matches, classics and greatest goals compilations... every time you see soccer on TV or the internet the broadcaster had to pay for it.
Of course there are many people in many countries who couldn't see anything of their favorite team if there weren't any video hosting sites, or even better, live p2p-streams of those matches and they should watch it there. I don't see any legal problems on the viewer's side. And if there are enough people watching it that way, then a tv station in their country will maybe buy the rights, too.
If only you understood how penalties worked in soccer... Whether anyone likes it or not, "faking" is part of soccer. No one complains about a basketball player who "draws a foul," yet since many Americans don't understand how soccer fouls/penalties work, they see a player who "fakes" an injury as being a sissy. As hard as it is for some people to understand, it's part of the game.
BTW, I grew up in Illinois and have lived there all my life except for the two years I went to college in California before transferring to the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. I've also played soccer in both club and school leagues since I was 8 years old, not to mention the other "American" sports I've been involved in over the years.
Ah, Slashdot.
Where the ball kicks you.
Apparently.
Copyrights infringement is a serious issue. This is what any sensible person will agree on. But the amount which is being sought is way out of touch with reality. The court will decide the merits of this case and if found guilty, how much YouTube has to pay. Hopefully, YouTube will learn a lesson from all this and avoid it from happening in the future. Mscsrrr, http://www.google.com/bookmarks/?hl=en&zx=5869
And they don't want another opponent share the sweet-cake. In the end they'll come to a settlement nad share the advertisement revenues.
>Football is an important part of a large part of the world's culture. It is unjust to lock it up behind copyright
nobody is locking 'football' up, just the premiere league. football is always available, look around for sunday leagues or pub teams near you, loads going on. or you could always go and play it and join in the culture.
i disagree that it is culture though, its 22 twunts kicking a pork bag full of air around prime development land. its only reason to exist is to give blokes something to talk about so they don't sit in silence in a pub.
The mistake they make is thinking that the man who takes a dive is being a sissy, as opposed to being a cheating bastard. De facto part of the game it may be, but I'm always delighted when the referee actually calls people on this one; to see a notorious diver actually get booked for simulation once in a while is a wonderful thing.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
"I didn't vote for Godwin or his Law. And if you can ignore copyright as a limitation on your free speech, why can't I ignore Godwin as a limitation on mine?"
For the same reason you can't ignore newton's; different kind of law. One type is a construction of society and can be dismantled by society; the other is a fundamental of the workings of the world.
You've made an ass of yourself; some things can't be undone.
Premier League matches, for the whole season, are worth about 6 billion pounds to film them, Sky and the terrestrial networks always bid against each other for the rights when they come around and its always in the billions. So it may just be soccer, but having the exclusive right to show the games live on your TV network is worth quite a bit.
Yes, there are *some* people who will not produce information-products (including software, music, images, or what-have-you) if they cannot globally enforce copy restrictions. Agreed. Such people should, IMO, go in to a different line of work. That is perfectly acceptable for a very simple reason: there will be more than enough people who find good reasons to produce such works in the absence of copyright restrictions. Some people will find an alternative means of making money off freely-duplicated works, and others just because they are altruistic.
Remember that people pay good money for their hardware, and copyright restrictions mean they cannot make full use of it. Copyright isn't actually a "freedom" for the person producing a work....people will still be completely free to produce works without copyright restrictions. Copright may be a "benefit" to the producers of a work (though in practice it is not; it is only a benefit to the distributors of the work, but I won't get into that here), but to call it a "freedom" is incorrect. Copyright law is a restriction on freedom to everyone in the world, and if such a freedom is going to be globally sacrificed, there had better be a damn good reason for it.
The only reason you have given is the false premise that without these restrictions, no-one will produce knowledge-products. Not only is this false in theory (since some people will produce stuff for free, and since some people will find ways of making money off knowledge-products in the absence of copyright restrictions), but there are lots of examples of businesses that make money off a free end-product, and of profoundly useful products made without any profit motive. And there are more where those came from.
That last set of links is pretty important. Google gives all of its services away for free, and yet has a market cap of over 100 billion. Not only are there business models built around free products, but they are very profitable and fiercely competitive.
Also check out this and this. Copyright is still there, but it is unenforced upon the consumer. It will be interesting to see how this selective approach to enforcement will pan out.
It is true that a farmer who gives away his crops for free would go broke, and if farmers could not legally force people to pay for their products then there would be no farmers. However, this observation not apply to information products. Information is fundamentally different from physical products, and business models surrounding it wind up taking a different form than traditional business models (a form which includes a free and/or freely redistributable product).
What we are dealing with is a new kind of abundance. Oxygen is an abundant resource, (anyone can get it for free because it just never runs out). Traditional capitalistic wisdom says that it is not possible to build a business around such resources, and further that no one will produce them because of that. Information is also abundant, once it exists (since it can be duplicated at zero cost by anyone). But it is also strangely non-abundant, since it's initial production requires an expenditure of resources. Traditional capitalistic models have a very hard time categorizing it...is it abundant or isn't it? Copyright law is an attempt at forcing it in to the "limited" category so that the traditional models wil
Mr. Hydro, sir, you may have been joking, but you just very neatly summed up a large part of the future of advertising.
Now, if there's any content, then sports is something that is hurt least by YouTube. How many people would rather watch a game in shoddy quality a day after it's aired (and the papers already all printed the result)? If you're a real fan (and provided you can, with a network existing that would broadcast it), you pay that prime time TV abo and watch it on your flat screen!
Seeing it a day after it's aired is like watching yesterday's news. What counts about a game of whatever sports is to watch it when it's played. And if it's SUCH a great game that it deserves being in a box with all the other great games ever played, the last place I'd want to watch it is YouTube. I'd want a great game in great quality!
If you're stuck with having to watch on YouTube, having no alternative, you are actually not hurting the rights holder. He could not have made a cent with you, not even "indirectly" by selling it to a network near you. He didn't.
So generally, the loss is near zero. Either people would have paid the price (either by paying for the premium TV or watching the commercials) because it's better on a "real" TV or they would not have been able to watch it anyway.
But no. The attitude is, "I have the rights to this and I dictate what happens with it". Generally, the content industry is not about making content available anymore, it is about making content not available and creating an artificial shortage. Which is kinda odd, considering that we can easily survive without content. But they can't without us buying it.
Currently, we're used to having access to content, so we want it. If they manage to instill the sentiment that it's hard to get content, we might start to think that it's not worth the hassle. And that would certainly hurt the sales... erh... Or did it already?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Cheating bastard" is more than a little bit harsh, but yeah it's a lot closer than being a sissy. And yes, it's definitely nice to see a faker get called, which is the risk in faking... and part of the game.
If the FA had any pride in the game they'd expel people that dive or fake an injury. Any footage showing a clear dive should cause a retrospective reversal of the game result. If both teams have dives then they should both _lose_ points.
Sport is about winning fairly by skill. Keep your lying and cheating for off the field and your skill for on it.
>>> "what's the problem with people being able to watch it"
.... et cetera.
...
Well the problem is that for some reason football fans think that footballers are worth millions of pounds each in wages each year. So, in order to pay the football players you charge the fans wherever you can - season ticket, gate, concession stand, program, shirt, away shirt, replica boots, trainers (aka sneakers) with facsimile signature, subscription to watch the game at home, dvd of best games / goals
The amazing thing is that people support this industry and that capitalism (in the UK) puts these people as being the most valuable to society - not owners in manufacturing industries, not innovative engineers, not the brightest scientists, not the most skilled medics, not the most inspiring teachers, but footballers!
What the hell is wrong with society?
PS: I love football but don't have opportunity to play anymore - I watch international football and each time I watch I become more disgusted with those chosen to be our face to the world, their cheating, fouling, disrespect
www.live-footy.org
If there were no copyright laws, we wouldn't need the GPL, so the point is moot.
If you squint really hard, you might actually be able to see a sport in between the commercials.
The worst part is, if you watch it live you don't actually see any more action... they are constantly taking 'time out' and re-arranging players etc. The players run around frantically for a few seconds then stand around idly for several minutes at a time.
You get more action in test cricket.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
If so many people want to watch it "after the fact", doesn't that imply that it has considerable financial value? If people can download it, will they watch the replays (which also attract advertising revenue)? Will they buy the DVDs (more revenue)? If you want to argue that soccer is so important culturally that it should be freely available, why not extend this argument to the live feed? Why not take all the profit out of it and then we can go back to the era of amateur sport where the players had to fit training and playing in between their "real job"? If you want to see the absolute best in human athleticism, you have to accept the profit-turning of professional sport--money is that much of a motivator/enabler for some (note that I said "some", not "all").
I don't know about "considerable", but yes, there is a small amount of value after the fact.
At the end of the season, I suppose hard-core fans would be willing to purchase the entire season on DVD.
But for the most part, I think the residual value is pretty low. Once you know the outcome of the match, the value of coverage after the fact is pretty low. That's not to say it's zero, but it's pretty close. Live sports coverage is a perishable commodity.
But say you are a fan living outside of the country, and you can't get the live broadcast. Why isn't it offered in some form on-line by the FA? It's offered on P2P. In the age of the internet, you have to either publish or perish.
Should a weekly football match broadcast -really- be protected for 75 years?
The "artificial scarcity" model of copyright ignores the internet at its own peril.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Secondly, you'll note the person you are replying to will not reply. That's because you broke Godwin's Law.
Not to be picky, but shouldn't you say that he comfirmed or conformed to Godwin's law? Breaking Godwin's law would be a noble thing.
Where you actually get to play teams from other countries en route to becoming 'World Champions'.
Worst. Signature. Ever.
> Why do you have to invade everyone's privacy and give some small group ultimate authority over everyone's PC? You accuse me of using extremes, then use them yourself.
I never said you supported them. Read that again! Not even ONCE did I say that. I said that they were evidence that copyright law ought to give way, based on your own arguments. So perhaps, to be consistent, you should support copyright reform, but not once did I claim that you did. Indeed, it's very clear that you do not if you must compare your opposition to Nazis!
Rather, I do say that these things are happening! You must be blind if you've not read the RIAA stories plastered all over Slashdot, and they most certainly do invade the lives of innocent people who do not even own computers, only to go after their friends and family once they discover the initial persons' innocence!
> we should just chuck the whole thing instead of trying to fix it
Dear me, did you even READ my post!? Did I not cry for copyright reform, or do you not know the meaning of any of these words? Why must you troll with such empty rhetoric?
> When you abolish stupid copy protections and bad DRM, the potential for piracy goes up... and so should the penalty.
Because you can't already go to prison for enough years in the case of criminal copyright infringement? You say I am a poor student of the Renaissance if I don't know that the works of that time were supported by patrons (as though the Catholic church is the only possible patron in the modern age, or I was unaware of the great successes of that model of production--you may note the ratio of crap to great works, among other things), yet you are unaware of the criminal portions of USC 17? Or are the financially ruinous statutory penalties not high enough for even civil infringement (yes, the RIAA is... kind... enough not to go for the millions of dollars they'd otherwise be entitled to, it's the closest thing to mercy I've seen from them).
> But if your method of changing it is to destroy it, you create an environment in which those who agree with you on many points must end up opposing you, because if you make this an argument with only two sides, you make it a choice of the lesser of two evils. And at least for me, anarchy is always the greater evil.
There at least we might have a genuine disagreement. I honestly don't see any way to change the status quo than openly flouting the more ridiculous portions of it. Why else would I bother to memorize a meaningless hex string useful only if I had software I don't own or disks I have no intention of buying or watching in the first place? It's certainly not because I intend to infringe upon any copyrights, even if I were to do that, I wouldn't need that number in the first place!
Yet again, you say that as if I cannot see any matter of degrees, but you are the one who sees me as a "black and white" person! That most certainly could barely be further from the truth. Yes, I may go about things differently from you, but why do you think I spoke of "reform" if abolition was the only possibility?
Dear me, if you're going to debate, please pay better attention to your opposition's position! I understand that it's inevitable that someone will misunderstand at least part of the other's position in any debate, but surely they must also understand at least part of what the other person is arguing! To prattle on without doing so is to make a fool of oneself and to undermine whatever point one might've had.