Slashdot Mirror
Blogger Removed From NCAA Game for Blogging
CNet is reporting that a blogger from the Courier-Journal of Louisville, KY was recently ejected from an NCAA game for live-blogging. "According to the Courier-Journal, staff blogger Brian Bennett was approached by NCAA officials in the fifth inning of a game between the University of Lousville and Oklahoma State, told that blogging 'from an NCAA championship event "is against NCAA policies (and) we're revoking the (press) credential and need to ask you to leave the stadium."'"
What a doozy of a sensationalistic story. The "See any serious problems with this story?" link took on a whole new meaning.
First, let's get this out of the way: this is the NCAA, not the government.
Second, let's go to TFA:
The Courier-Journal said that the University of Louisville sent out a memo from NCAA manager of broadcasting Jeramy Michiaels, prior to Friday's game. The memo said, in essence, that no blogging was allowed during the game.
Check.
But Bennett had not been approached after live-blogging previous games in the playoffs.
Oh, so then it must be okay? Talk about a non-story. The guy just got caught violating a policy that he knew about and probably even agreed to as a person with press credentials.
This was a person who wasn't removed for "blogging", but a person with press credentials who was providing live coverage of the event.
The NCAA naturally wants to control access to live (and recorded) broadcasts of games (and currently has the legal right to do so), whether they be video, audio, or even text. How or why is "blogging" magically different or protected?
Could someone set up a radio broadcast station from within an NCAA event without arranging the necessary licensing with the teams and the NCAA? Could someone do the same with a cell phone and broadcast it to a pirate radio station? Sure. The answer is you can do it if you don't get caught. Conspiracy theorists will wail about how it's all about money and control, just another example of censorship in our corporate/government-controlled police state society, ignoring any and all other aspects to order and law in a civil society, and the fact that, believe it or not, economic factors actually do come into play when a lot of money is involved in producing something.
Do you think ESPN, CNNSI, CBS and other sports news aggregators get the content for their live play-by-play event services on web sites and mobile devices for free? Hell no. The "information wants to be free" and "everything is okay when it's done using technology, but only when it's the people and not corporations or government" arguments can be saved for elsewhere.
What if I want to set up a network of personnel across the country who live-blog every NCAA sporting event, and broadcast it on a web site. Maybe one with ads. And then I pay people to live blog for me. At every event. And maybe all of those people can have computers with cameras, and stream video as well. Well, why not? I should be able to do that, right? No? Where do you draw the line?
If everyone wants to have bloggers be considered legitimate "journalists" no matter who they are, they're going to have to play by the same rules everyone else does, too. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Sure, sure, he's just "reporting on the event" with "newer technology" than the old antiquated dinosaurs, right? Wrong. He's providing some semblance of live coverage of the event, and that's something other content providers have to license and pay for.
If you're live-broadcasting an event, the NCAA is likely to get its feathers ruffled, and not allow you to do it. This is not the government, and if you think it's "censorship" or inhibiting free speech or that bloggers are just "journalists", except in more real time, then why don't you get all up in arms about not being able to broadcast the video or audio from the events live or in near realtime, either?
This isn't about "blogging". It's about live/near-live coverage of an event by a person with press credentials - that is another critical point - without having paid to do so, like everyone else who provides such coverage has.
Heck, we got more live updates from the Paris Hilton court hearing on tmz.com than we can get on an NCAA game.
And here I was hoping that the Great Blogger Purge had begun.
A man can dream, though. A man can dream...
End transmission.
This isn't a First Amendment issue in any way, shape, or form. This is an organization not letting an individual participate because he will not abide by their rules. You can kick people out of private events basically at whim, as long as it's not on the grounds of race, religion, sex, etc. This guy was given a press pass (ie he didn't even pay to get in!), and he got kicked out for doing something they didn't like.
That said, it's tough to say whether this was a bad move or not. In one way, this blogger is competing with the radio/tv broadcasts. On the other hand, it's some no-name newspaper that probably takes very little attention away, and kicking him out is only going to generate bad press.
The NCAA has a lot to gain by keeping a monopoly on live reporting. Who cares anyway? Besides, anyone with a Blackberry at game can blog live.
Given that a large percentage of NCAA schools are publicly funded, and the NCAA harps ad nauseam about their role in developing successful students, it would seem to follow that it's mostly a taxpayer-funded educational institution. I can understand them saying "you can't redistribute our coverage without our consent", but I see no way they can justify saying "you can't distribute your own take on the events you're watching that you funded out of your own wallet".
Want to retain all rights to an event's coverage? Well, good luck with that, but don't spend my tax dollars enforcing it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
People actually blog about NCAA baseball? And they threw him out.. I bet that kept a total 0 people from getting the latest from the game.
First of all, NCAA specifically disallows blogging, so I guess it has as much freedom to impose such restriction as that blogger to not attend the event.
it's hard to see how they can expect news organizations to keep from reporting the news as it happens.
I wouldn't be surprised if NCAA wants to introduce its own blog in the future.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
EULA 's at sporting events, music concerts and even your state fair!
:|
seriously.. if he or anyone else wanted to keep live bloggin, and risk their journalistic cred, how hard would it be to get people to sms/mms/phone in updates of the game?
these enterprises have top rethink how they make revenue in this new age....
the only reason this journalist was caught is because it became a big thing &trade.
and so the powers that be get upitty about lost revenue and arrest him...loosing even more revenue!
surely they can see if they supported live bloggin it could be a win - win for both parties
they should have made a revenue sharing deal, not get him arrested
times are changin , one must navigate, not resist
back in the day we didnt have no old school
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
survIval pro5pects
No camera, no video, no soundstream, no live action, no broadcast.
There is a real 1st Amendment question (as close as your government strawman comes). Blogging and broadcast are very different subjects.
You're just an asshole and your whole fallacy proves it.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
I do not agree with the blocking of blogging, but if he was in there for free , they have the right to eject him. If he had paid to attend, I think ejecting him would be completely wrong.
Free press stops when it trends on private property.
i'm sure they're legally well within their rights, but that doesn't mean it's smart. a) blogging in No Way Shape Or Form is going to realistically compete with the more lucrative, more important broadcast media. so, assuming they had their own official blog, they might be able to make some spare change from advertisers, but it's not going to be anywhere close to the other media rights. i can't imagine reading someone's live blog in lieu of watching the game on tv, if at all possible. b) blogs from the games are a great way to encourage grass-roots fandom. especially if you have multiple providers for the same game, some local, some not, it adds a colorful aspect that can only help boost the enthusiasm for fans. c) prohibiting the live blogs is *only* going to annoy the people who would have read them. personally, i was very disappointed to see they had prohibited the live-blogs. i'd really enjoyed going back and reading cstv.com 's live-blogs from the regional round of the tournament, and it was disappointing they wouldn't be able to provide the same service for the super-regionals. i think it's just another example of a corporation having a knee-jerk negative reaction that doesn't take into account what might actually be best for the customers.
In retrospect, he probably shouldn't have titled his blogpost "nappy-headed hos."
Just because blogging is a new thing doesn't mean it isn't the press. They don't let the news outlets show it live and they have lots of crazy rules. Just because blogging is a new thing doesn't mean he is excluded. It's still the press and it's still reporting and live reporting is typically not allowed. If you make up "zlogging" and say it's the live reporting of scores and cool stuff that happens at a game doesn't make it any more "allowed" because it's "too new" to have rules against it.
They've got about as much right to liveblog the game as I do to create my own radio broadcast of an NCAA playoff. This isn't censorship, it's a licensor protecting the exclusivity of its licensees.
YOUR YREPLIES RATHER Slaishdot's
They as SO off my friends list.
It is filed under the Your Rights Online category! You're not allowed to bring logic into these articles!
Is this an ETLA? Is the RSPCA or RoSPA involved? Does the EBU have any influence? Should we contact PDFORRA? I imagine the IALA might be able to help.
Actually, the NCAA's right to control live/semi-live/recorded broadcast of its events, from public/state institutions or otherwise, has been tested and confirmed time and again in the courts. The fact that some NCAA institutions are quasi-governmental entities is incidental to this argument. If you extend your argument, then unrestricted video, audio, text, or any other kind of broadcast should also be allowed without licensing from the events.
If you want to kind of make the stretch argument that this is "taxpayer funded", well, any events that the NCAA would even care about kicking a "live blogger" with press credentials out of are going to be at programs that are already highly profitable for the institution, and thus not funded by taxpayer dollars.
I believe I have addressed your concerns here and a bit here.
Journalist shouldn't have taken it too seriously.Its only college ball and no one really cares but participants,their families and anyone involved at a job level.
Frankly this year I've seen High School games that were more exciting.
Officials just had to pretend their life means something,so they act like they're in pro-ball.No real surprise there.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
And why should this be a problem? Yes, they haven't paid for the right to do so. But why ought that to be a requirement for being allowed to talk about a sponsored event? There's no other reason than that the powers that be decided that way.
Historically speaking, only people with money had access to a press, which means that only people with money had the ability to cover events. This in turn meant that it was possible to ask for money when providing access to media people, without preventing everyone else from participating in the event in their normal fashion. Today however, everyone can cover an event, and pretty much everyone does. This means that preventing someone with official press credentials from live-casting, blogging, vlogging (or via any other lexical abomination) an event only means that that person will try to do so without press credentials next - because the press credentials make no difference to the end-product. What's next? You can't talk about an event, unless you paid the governing body money? That's just madness in the making, and a ticket to oblivion for the event in question. Obviously, that's not a solution.
The problem with the NCAAA's approach not that an article in a blog is magically different from an article in a newspaper. The problem is that the logical conclusion of this approach is that anyone electronically disseminating an account of an event like this opens him/herself up to litigation for breach of contract, TOS, EULA or whatever else is in play. Personally, I'd say that all these rules should be declared against the public interest of being able to talk about the game in a way that goes beyond face to face or the phone. Organizations like the MLB could then do the same thing that videogame makers do: have an "Official" voice that gets primo access, and everyone else can do whatever they want, short of disrupting operations and the flow of the event.
Will this mean that traditional media takes another hit? Sure does. Do I care? No. No one is entitled to a revenue stream just because they had one in the past.
Finally, this is also a lesson in why you should always answer your rhethorical questions: it ensures that you get the right reaction from your audience.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Namaste
Parent says it all.
I remember an episode of the Simpsons that had a movie(or something) advertising "no internet spies". CBG gets thrown out. He asks them how they found out, and you see a desktop computer thrown out. He finishes with "it came with a mouse."
This headline is funnier if you read it as "Smurf Removed From NCAA Game for Smurfing".
Another evil ??AA?
"..as long as it's not on the grounds of race, religion, sex, etc. .."
I think in a *private* event, you can legally discriminate. May not win any friends, and the press may eat you alive, but i do think its your right to restrict your own private activities. ( ie, boyscouts... )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
But only from religious events....
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
But here's the thing with this story.
Whether or not someone can blog an event depends on some things. If it's an NCAA event (as this game was), it's the NCAA's call. As far as I know, the NCAA prohibits blogging at all of its championship events, including the College World Series and the Superregionals. It sucks, because even I as an institutional representative can't blog about my team, but as several other posters have said, there are a lot of rights and a lot of cash floating out there, between TV and radio, as well as livestats on the web and the ad revenues it generates. Monetarily, the NCAA is doing itself a favor, as well as the institutions, by restricting this.
Louisville WAS NOT restricting the blogging - the NCAA was. The blogger may have gotten away with it at the basketball, probably because that event is so huge and unwieldy from a media standpoint they couldn't track him down/know he was doing it, and the Orange Bowl isn't an NCAA event.
Most institutions don't care. I don't care. Hell, I WANT people blogging my school because it means we're getting that much more exposure. 17 year-olds aren't reading about us in the newspaper - they're reading blogs, and they're going to hear about us that way. I blog my own events during the regular season, but unfortunately, once its NCAA time, it goes out the window.
And don't do the whole "it's a state-funded school" thing - 90% of these schools don't see a dime of state money for athletics. Their athletic depts. are set up as corporations that generate their own revenue and are mostly driven by student tuition activities fees, football, men's basketball and corporate and private donors.
So, in conclusion, the NCAA is perfectly within their rights to restrict this, even though it's Evil and all that.
Also, to the earlier poster who said that ESPN, CBS, etc. pay to get their live statistic game feeds - not true. Most all of the scores and stats you see on ESPN and CBS come directly from the institutions themselves. For example, if I'm the statistician for a football game, we send a live stat XML feed to our web provider, and it also gets FTP'd straight to ESPN. For schools that use the CSTV service, it goes to CBS Sportsline (which owns CSTV). For games not feeding stats like that, there are a few companies that will actually call the press row line (or, if they feel like being a pain in my ass, my cell phone) and ask for the score, high scorers, etc. ESPN owns the largest of these, SportsTicker.
It's a very large private gathering.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
How asinine. He could have been doing it in front of his television set, seeing the same game, and there would have been nothing they could have done about it. He wasn't rebroadcasting their account of the game. It was his account. Next thing you know, cell phones will be banned -- especially those with cameras!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It does not matter what the relationship between blogging and broadcasting is. That's a red herring.
He can say what he likes about the game on his own property, on his own dime. The 1st Amendment does not address the issue of entering property belonging to others, such as the place where the game was played. The property owners may set conditions on entry. They did. He knew of those conditions. He violated those conditions. So he was ejected. The only legal issues are those regarding his permission to enter private property - not a free speech issue at all.
The University can eject anyone from their property for any reason or no reason at all. They did NOT restrict his speech; they restricted his access to the event that he wanted to speak about. If I decide to speak about your sex life, the 1st Amendment does not give me permission to enter your bedroom.
The "information wants to be free" and "everything is okay when it's done using technology, but only when it's the people and not corporations or government" arguments can be saved for elsewhere.
Why?
Seriously. Why?
These are relevant points of discussion. I do not place the rights of the corporation above the rights of the individual. In fact, I hold that the rights of the corporation are inferior to the rights of the individual. I ask honestly, does the corporation even have the right to restrict the reporting of *any* individual?
I hold they do not. In our twisted society, of course, it is not only allowed, but encouraged. However, that does not make it *right*.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Its not arbitrary at all - its the rules he must agree to for a press pass.
If this guy is live blogging, he is providing a live source that either circumvents the advertising of the sponsors, or circumvents live-feeds that require a fee to watch. In short, he is messing with their revenue streams.
btw - the coverage is private, not the event. Just like the MLB etc.
People on the internet are censorship-noobs. They have no idea where their rights end and their privileges begin.
I don't have any sporting events ticket stubs handy, but I am sure they have rules on them... my Zoo ticket even says I can't take pictures of the animals for "commercial use"...
If there is a "commercial use" clause in the NCAA rules, did the blogger really violate them? I haven't looked, but does this blogger have referral ads or anything else that might be construed as commercial?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
...but fans should really start crying "bullshit" to all the crap being flung by professional sports organizations. Basketball, football, baseball. Stop supporting these assholes! They can only get away with their assault on fans as long as the fans let them.
.... He was also asked to remove all memory of the day from his mind as recalling it later is against their policies, Unless he buys a ticket for each time the memory is recalled. When leaving the stadium spectators were told "first rule of NCAA is: Don't talk about NCAA, Second rule of NCAA is: Don't blog about NCAA and the third rule of NCAA is: No outside food or drink".
By the way, I'm English, I have no idea what NCAA is.
God Be Gone
Here is the blog in question if you'd like to read for yourself.
Ergo, not a first amendment issue.
If "blogging" is banned, then what is "blogging"? Is it the act of posting an article to a website? If so then all web publishing is banned.
Is the the act of publishing an article on the web while the event is still in progress? I would say that the majority of web publishing is still banned as most all sites will post updates to articles of the game, especially if something happened like an injury or upset in the making. If we take this to the logical non-web based world, any pre-submitted articles would also be considered banned. So the sporting equivilent of "Dewey Defeats Truman" won't ever happen again, because if it does, then we know you posted the article before the game/event ended, not that deadlines have anything to do with it.
How can blogging while at the live event be distinguished from blogging from say a TV or radio broadcast (asside from name being attached to said article)?
Is it banned if I call on a cell phone and relay the events to someone else who then "blogs" the phone conversation? What if this is a friend who is participating in some social event in which their entire existance is posted on a blog like say some who was listed as a potential terroriest who decided the best way to beat that fact was to post his entire life online in realtime, like professor Hasan Elahi as posted in a previous slashdot article.
It is an incredible slippery slope that the NCAA is trying to walk on here.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Why would you even need to get a press pass to blog? Can't you simply blog from the stands, and bypass the stupid "press credential/contract" crap?
All you would need is a decent PDA and you could post results, scores, updates, etc. from the stands. You are not videotaping or photographing anything, just typing out what you see with your eyes into text and posting it that way.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
By logical extension, pretty soon nobody will be allowed to use cellular phones at sporting events. This means YOU, Captain Retardo with your bluetooth dongle crammed in your ear. You could be giving a play-by-play to somebody outside, who might in turn be BLOGGING the event. For shame!
You may argue the NCAA is within its rights to deny bloggers at sporting events, but this is just another example of a misguided corporation struggling for control over information. But information can't be controlled like the turnstiles to the stadium. So all they've really done is pissed off someone who is just doing their job, and those folks will eventually find someone getting around their restrictions despite the NCAA's greatest efforts.
Here's another take: this is the first time the University of Louisville is making an appearance at the College World Series. Do they really want to tell the local newspaper beat writer, who may be just finally starting to get some Cards fans excited about baseball, that he has to pack it up and not cover the event? What kind of idiots run the NCAA anyway? If they wanted to stir up some kind of stink about the Intertubes, they should have waited until the sports doldrums that start here in a few weeks.
-- Mojo Tooth : exploring our world as only an idiot can.
Do I really have to Google for this shit? Not everyone's American, people... Please write out acronyms for easy understanding, thanks a lot.
:-)
NCAA = National Collegiate Athletic Association
I guess it's kind of popular over there.. Compared to Europe, where we play real sports in real leagues
"We NEED to X"
You don't NEED, you WANT.
Abdication of responsibility seems to have become a national pastime in Amerikka,.
No. They're not relevant points of discussion.
Ignoring the obvious fact that corporations aren't about to go away, let's consider this. Is it right to go back on your word, after you gave it in good faith? I wont even start into the idea that "well, I did it X times before and I didn't get in trouble..." Only a fucking eight year old would use that kind of retarded logic. Is it right to decide that, for some magical reason, you are the exception and that the rules somehow do not apply to you? No. That kind of thinking is why we have people like Paris Hilton. And where the hell did you get the idea that you have the right to someone ANYONE else's property, even if it is a corporation?
If you're going to make a poster child of someone who clearly can't tell the difference between right and wrong, I'd at least suggest a topic worth picking instead of this one. If he wanted to undauntedly "report" (and I use that term looser than goatse.cx man's asshole when it comes to bloggers) he should have waited until it was broadcast. Play by the god damn rules or don't go in the first place.
And don't give me this self serving individual rights bullshit. Just because you want to do something doesn't mean you have the right to do it. That's a narrow and childish way to view the world.
Don't troll him.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
... should that be the right state of things?
In other countries such actions of private entities are explicitly outlawed.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
This is why I'm going to law school!!
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
"I submit that it is an open question. You may indeed be right, but I tend to fall on the other side of the argument."
Considering that there is no legitimate reason for you to "fall on the other side of the argument" I am forced to question your qualifications for forming an intelligent opinion.
You've essentially "fallen on the other side" of an argument with no legitimate other side. Whether you submit that it's an open question or not changes nothing.
"The NCAA does not own any events or the content of those events"
This is when I decided to post in response. Why? Because you're completely wrong. The NCAA owns virtually ALL of the college championship tournaments (INCLUDING the College World Series, which this is about) with the notable exception of the BCS championship game.
I don't know why you think you know what you're talking about, but you're wrong. As to the specifics of the story, your opinion changes a bit when you realize they asked him to leave an event THEY OWN. This isn't about state sponsored blah blah spiel or 1st amendment rights or other ridiculous assertions, it is about the OWNERS of an event enforcing their standards for participation in an event THEY OWN.
You're an imbecile. Feel free to accuse me of an ad-hominem.
You've repeatedly screamed about "1st amendment" yet have provided NO meaningful arguments and failed to refute those that others have posted. You have attempted to deflect criticism of your points by shouting "FALLACY!!!" while failing to clarify exactly what fallacies you see, thereby closing down discussion of whether they are fallacies at all.
You are wrong. The courts have ruled on cases like this several time before, and there is NO 1st amendment question, there is YOU insisting that you're more lucid than everyone else and regurgitating first year rhetoric concepts (that you mangle badly and misuse) while completely failing to posit an argument more advanced than "YES HUH!!!".
The NCAA is a private actor, which said NOTHING about this fellow's ability to disseminate information about their event (that THEY own, not the participating Universities) and only addressed his ability to do it from a specified location. This has NOTHING to do with the 1st, and repeatedly bellowing "YES HUH!!! DOES TOO!!! FALLACY!!!!DOUBLE FALLACY!!!" makes you seem all the more obstinate and ignorant.
You are wrong. Proceed to your standard response.
You're still wrong. And still an asshole.
To correct your flawed thinking.
"The NCAA acknowledges that there are First Amendment protections afforded to journalists who have been issued press credentials, without enumerating them"
That is why you are wrong. This is in no way a 1st amendment case despite what you and others seem to think. The individual did not have his speech regulated, he had his conduct regulated, as is the NCAA's right, which was agreed to by the individual involved. They said "you cannot do X" which he promptly did. This is no more a first amendment case than someone taking a dump in the sink and getting thrown out is a first amendment case.
Now I have corrected you, you're welcome.
ok, I know this a day late, but for all the stragglers like me..... this is just my opinion, no legal basis whatsoever:
The question: did the NCAA have standing to eject the blogger from the game? I think this hinges on one simple fact. Does the NCAA own the grounds the game was held on, or are they representing the entity which does own it? If either of those conditions are met, it would seem to me that the NCAA can kick out whoever they want.
However, it appears that the University of Louisville is a public school. This, to me at least, means that the only grounds for ejecting someone from the stadium would be some sort of disorderly conduct, and the ejecting would need to be done by law officers or stadium security. So even if NCAA handles security, which I frankly don't know, if the blogger wasn't being disorderly, there's no standing for kicking him out.
Analogy time, what's a sport slashdotters can relate to? Ultimate. So you start a local ultimate frisbee league, and you meet at the local public park. For the sake of argument, let's imagine it gets as popular as baseball, and people start showing up to watch. You, being the entrepeneur that you are, decide to sell some concessions. Now, again for reasons that violate every natural law of coolness, the sport gets really popular, and you decide to up your game and start recording and streaming it online, making money from ads. So you're making money, having fun, so far, so good. That is until some other competing entrepenuers show up with handycams.
So two questions: can you kick them out of the public park, and can you claim copyright over the game itself and exercise your copyright priveleges accordingly?
On both counts, I would say no. Wrt the first, they have as much right to be there as anyone, and that should only be taken away if they truly are, by reasonable standards of a law officer (yeah, i know), disorderly and/or a danger others in some way. Otherwise, you can't touch'em. Anything less is an afront to personal freedom. Wrt the second, hell no you can't copyright the game. Why? Because, history, recordings of facts, hell reality itself IS NOT up for grabs as intellectual property (or at least it shouldn't be).
Now, if you can make a stalking case (thinking paparrazi here) that may be a little different (IANAL). However, it would seem to me that you can only claim stalking/paparrazi if you make a sensible effort to communicate you don't want to be filmed, want to be left alone, and show that the alleged stalking is specifically aimed at an individual, not at an event, or just a place in general. In other words, walking around the city with your handycam is ok, as long as you're not following someone in particular without their consent. But if that person(s) are occupying a city square holding a rally, well then they're fair game.
But of course, you can see where I'm going with this. All of these other variables that might possibly give you (or the NCAA) standing to remove someone just aren't there. You have no standing to do that.
Now, if we change the analogy so that you're playing ultimate in your back yard, charing admission, streaming online with ads, well then that's your private property, you can do what you bloody well want, within confines of the law. But the park is public. Don't like it? Well then use another venue.
I haven't posted to /. in a while, but in reading thru these threads, it just seemed like noone was concerned with the fact that this was a public place (AFAICT), and even beyond that, that noone has ownership over the content of a sports game. Well, at least they shouldn't in a rational society. Like I said, I mostly read, don't post often, but these I felt were two really important points that were being missed, and I just couldn't let it go.
Billy Brown rides on. Yolanda Green bypasses Gary White.