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The NFL Wants You To Think These Things Are Illegal
An anonymous reader writes: Professional sports have become a minefield of copyright and trademark issues, and no event moreso than the Super Bowl. Sherwin Siy of Public Knowledge has an article debunking some of the things the NFL has convinced people they can't do, even through they're perfectly legal. For example, you've probably heard the warning about how "descriptions" and "accounts" of the game are prohibited without the NFL's consent. That's all hogwash: "The NFL would be laughed out of court for trying to prevent them from doing so—just because you have a copyright in a work doesn't mean you can prevent people from talking about it. Copyright simply doesn't extend that far." Recording the game and watching it later is just fine, too.
So, will you be paying attention to the game today? Ignoring it? Practicing your cultivated disinterest?
So, will you be paying attention to the game today? Ignoring it? Practicing your cultivated disinterest?
Just another Sunday with an evening football game. I'll catch it here and there. Can't sit in front of the tv for 3-4 hours; I'll lose interest.
When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. It only affects the people around you. Same thing when you're stupid.
how desperate for a story has /. become
The article misses the big point here: regardless of whether or not what you do is actually illegal, the NFL may very well sue you anyway. It's illegal in practice even if not in the books.
to not give a fsck about the superbole in particular of even (american) football in general
?
I will be practicing the modern tradition of ruining any chance of enjoying the game by attending a SuperBowl party. Ostensibly a gathering to watch a championship sporting event, the SuperBowl party actually results in a gathering of families where the game is on a television that happens to be in the same location. Every now and then someone will exclaim and attention will divert to a big play that just happened, but for the most part the wives' small talk and rounding up the kids will occupy the fathers attention. Except when the commercials come on. For some reason the wives are really interested in the commercials, so they'll stop everything and have everyone be quiet for at least some of the commercials.
At least there will be lots of finger food and drinks.
Wrong. The NFL says the BROADCAST descriptions and accounts are copyrighted. Plenty of other places have their own accounts and descriptions.
Do not talk about Puppy Bowl!
When NFL says "Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game"
They are not referring to you talking to your friends about the game or even you authoring an original description and publishing it.
They are essentially saying any descriptions or accounts given in the telecast or personal accounts written by staff under contract to create them are protected, which they are.
You are not allowed to copy a description or account from the telecast and reuse their description or account beyond what fair use allows, as it is subject to copyright just like the images, video, and live audio.
its the Legion of Lawyers (TM) that stand ready to crush anyone that does something they don't like. Getting hit by their lawyers makes taking a hit in the game feel like you're playing a sandlot game of touch.
They're also protecting the revenue they get from official sponsors. If everyone starts using Super Bowl in their adds then paying big bucks to be an official sponsor is less valuable as your message gets lost in the crowd.
As for the product placement in shows and movies; it's not so much "we'll get sued" as "they aren't paying us for a placement so screw them. We'll use their product but cover up the label." Though sometimes they miss one. Big Bang Theory obscures the Apple on the back of their Macs but missed one on the front on a Mac in the background in a recent episode.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
One of the linked articles in TFA shows that the NFL is also just fine with illegally issuing repeated DMCA notices for the same URL even after they've received a notification that the content is being used in good faith under fair use. Unfortunately, there's really nothing in the DMCA to provide for fines or other deterrents to such behavior, so the NFL and other copyright holders sometimes use repeated DMCA notices to make it enough of a headache for the provider to permanently pull the non-infringing content or to suspend/remove the poster's account entirely.
One law for thee, another for me.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
The author totally skips over the first sentence ""This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience" and then points out all of the things that a private citizen can do.
Duh.
Whatever NFL is doing sounds very much like MAFIAA has been doing to everybody for the past 2 decades or so --- one FUD after another
Tha MAFIAA violates the law more times than anyone can count - including demanding people's totally legitimate videos to be pulled down from youtube, mailing threatening letters to innocent party who never commit any music / video pirating, filing DCMA on legitimate contents online, and so on
I liked the idea that just describing the game to a friend was against the DCMA. That would make so easy to break the law. I could commit a felony almost every week. How Fun?
I can't wait until the day where it is illegal to watch it, and maybe then we will finally be done with this nonsense.
http://www.todayifoundout.com/...
Munroe has the right idea:
Hooray for snacks!
Probably coding something, playing guitar, or cooking steaks depending on when the game is on and where I am at the time. My girlfriend does pay attention to some football. She's from Philly so occasionally wants to know how her team is doing. She may have the game on.
And it's not 'cultivated disinterest'. I didn't grow up with sports interest in the house so I didn't have to cultivate it. I'm simply not interested. I know how it's played, I know where most teams are located, I even know who some of the players are. I have a TV but pretty much only watch DVDs. I do like MotoGP but not much beyond reading about it and catching the occasional show. You can get a lot of the same "social aspect" by watch TV shows like Walking Dead, Arrow, Flash, True Blood, Twilight. It depends on what part of the social contract you're trying to fulfill. As a pretty heavily leaning Introvert, even going to a bar with my friends for an hour or so gives me a headache.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Football is pretty sleazy. I don't doubt that the rapes, the assaults, the murders, the cheating and all have been going on for a long time, but now it's all out in the open, and I've switched ove to the NHL. And once you do that, football becomes pretty boring too. Before I gave up on the league, I had started reading during thefootball games for something to do.
So no, I won't be watching tonight. It's a sleazy sport, and the pace is simply glacial. And one of the teams in it appears to be serial cheaters too.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It's like Christmas(USA), an excuse for broadcast TV to take another 2 weeks off, people consume a lot of bad food and drink too much.
... start to finish. I'll flip over to it from time to time to check on the score. If it turns out that Seattle is beating the tar out of New England, I may keep watching just because I really can't stand the Patriots.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
> Unfortunately, there's really nothing in the DMCA to provide for fines or other deterrents to such behavior
Yes, there is... doing so is felony.
Rugby is played by sissies. Hurling is where the real men go to play. They really should rename it "hematoma ball".
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
apparently the Supreme Court thinks like the NFL...(http:///www.aereo.com)
Citation, please.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
This is because the NFL is not an ordinary business. It is a cartel of independent teams. Such cartels, for example OPEC, are illigal in the US since 1890 but is allowed through special acts of congress. This allows it to set rules for all teams, set TV contracts, and set pay scales without any competition.
This leads to the ability to generate profits only available to socialist organizations. For instance, excessively high payment from TV networks require excessively high fees to cable providers which are paid by all cable subscribers, even if they never watch the channel. The cartel is also able to leverage national monies to convince localities to force taxpayer to fund stadiums, even if those that are never going to use the stadiums. These monies then go into individual pockets as profits.
I have heard people saying the same about music halls, but there is certainly no national cartel of music lovers that bribe local officials, that transfers the risk of the building from a for profit organization the taxpayer.
There are other costs to society. Because the rules are set, public tax dollars can be used to train kids for the NFL through public school funds. Because salaries are set, the players, though well paid, do not have the ability to truly negotiate a contract. Recall that tech firms have gotten in trouble for this, even though the employees were generally well paid.
And of course there is a fundamental loss to a society that depends on the free market that kids are taught about fair play and rules within a socialist construct where there is in fact a rule book and powerful referees. While this is useful for a 10 year old, it is disastrous when an adult goes into a work place believing her or his life is really going to be controlled by a rule book. It kills innovation and creativity. At leas in baseball you can steal a base. The immaturity of football can be characterized by the fact that everyone got their panties in bunch over deflate gate. In the real free market world that would just be considered a necessary cost of doing business.
Which is to say that the NFL basically lives within it's own bubble. It has the ability to bribe congress, or throw enough lawyers at the problem, to bend the rules no matter what previous legislation or case law says.
And I don't think the NFL is a natural cartel, like the electric company. I think real competition, not the fake thing taught to kids by the NFL structure and games, is good. I don't think sports fans are nearly as dumb as the average sports cartel thinks they are. The current structure is merely a way to maximize profit at taxpayer expense, and to create a world where fundamental rights are infringed for the sake of the bottom line or a corporation.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Repeal all anti-trust exemptions. Starting with the McCarron Ferguson act of 1945.
The DMCA claim itself is the citation, the whole mandatory "under the penalty of perjury" part of it, you know.
Well the message is all the same, legalities or not: we are the NFL, a massive, mega-billion dollar, tax-exempt corporation with the government deep and firm in our pockets. If we say you've done something wrong and bring out our army of lawyers to intimidate you, you will be intimidated, make no mistake about that. You may therefore split hairs all you like; we can chop heads and get away with it.
On balance, anyway, I will join Zirin in rooting for Seattle because of what they can make socially of another victory. But I won't be watching.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
When someone asks me for the score of a game, I tell them,"NFL prohibits descriptions of accounts of the game without their expressed written permission."
God spoke to me
Where the article claims that intellectuals compete over their ignorance of sports, non-intellectuals compete over their ignorance of math or other subjects as well. Some people in any cultural subgroup will do things like this as a means of establishing their cultural identity. It's not that big of a deal.
Why is it important to me that I should be able to instantly bond with members of the "working class?" (I work, everyone I know works, what the article means is "lower class"). In my personal experience (mostly in college and shortly thereafter), plenty of lower class people also spend what little money they have on street drugs and excessive alcohol while voicing hatred for the wealthy. Such people are not only uninteresting to me bug outright dangerous. I am very glad I pulled myself out of that culture, and I have no interest in spending more time with such people than I have to.
If I am to force myself to become interested in something that I naturally find boring, I am going to need better incentive than "but you can make friends with people you don't normally want to be friends with!"
Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet and Kitten Bowl on Hallmark Channel. Then Downton Abbey on PBS followed by Grantchester.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Completely wrong. The only thing that is under penalty of perjury in the DC is the statement that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright holder.
To successfully sue somebody, you still have to actually show how that party had actually done some sort of wrong by you... and them simply saying that it is wrong doesn't actually make it so. They would still need to convince a judge of that.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It's (paraphrased) that you BELIEVE it to be true that you are authorised by the copyright holder of a work and that this work is the one you have rights to claim copyright infringement on.
So if you BELIEVE that "Bat out of Hell" (where someone posts why they have a phobia of bats with clips of them reacting to bats) is the *song* by Meatloaf AND that you are authorised by Meatloaf to make the claim for Meatloaf's recording, then you are clear of perjury.
Heck, you'd get away if it was "Bat Hell" because you claim "it was confusingly similar".
Its 100 million people who who need exercise watching 22 guys who don't*.
*Then again .....
Don't mind me. I'm just here so I won't get fined.
Have gnu, will travel.
For instance, excessively high payment from TV networks require excessively high fees to cable providers which are paid by all cable subscribers, even if they never watch the channel.
You don't need to subscribe to cable. Plenty of folks don't, and more seem to be cutting the cord every day. I haven't subscribed to cable television since the 1990s.
The cartel is also able to leverage national monies to convince localities to force taxpayer to fund stadiums, even if those that are never going to use the stadiums.
If your local and state government sucks, blame your neighbors. This doesn't seem to happen in the Northeast -- both Boston and New York teams paid for their own stadiums (partial exception: Barclay's).
Because the rules are set, public tax dollars can be used to train kids for the NFL through public school funds.
Yeah, and public tax dollars are training rock musicians, artists, debaters, glee-ers, chess players, and goodness knows what else.
Because salaries are set, the players, though well paid, do not have the ability to truly negotiate a contract.
The salaries are set following a union negotiation. If you want to claim that unions set salaries and that's bad, be my guest. You'll certainly have support around here. Union participation in America is nearly 15 million. There's nothing unique about the NFL negotiating with a union to set wages.
I'll stop now, though I'm sure there's more criticism of your weak tea.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
That's football. Right? Big guys? Helmets? Not much action?
Better things to do.
This leads to the ability to generate profits only available to socialist organizations. For instance, excessively high payment from TV networks require excessively high fees to cable providers which are paid by all cable subscribers, even if they never watch the channel.
Every NFL game is broadcast on free, over the air TV in the media market of its home and visiting teams. There's two packages, each with 15 games over the course of the season, which have "national" games broadcast on cable. ESPN has Monday Night Football, and NFL Network has Thursday Night Football. Almost all TNF games will be simulcast on CBS (which is broadcast OTA) nationally next year. The other games are all on CBS, NBC, or Fox, which are not sports channels. While sports channels demanding higher carriage fees is a concern, it's not because of NFL games.
the point is they don't evne have to get as far as the finding stage, all they have to do is drown you in enough paperwork to kill you in lawyers fees. Ever see a legal team leave a sinking ship? Faster than a rat up a drainpipe, they are. Fuck the merits of the case at that point, they've broken you and to them that is all that matters: they've made an example of you and probably haven't even met the judge yet.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
"The NFL" does not make any money. They pay the referees, they pay for the draft, they pay the commissioner, and they do a few other things. They get the money to do this by charging dues to the 32 member teams. If "the NFL" has any money left over, they divide it up and give it back to the teams.
All the profit that "the NFL" makes is really made by the teams. The teams are independent businesses organized under the laws of the United States and the state and municipality that they operate out of. The teams, who are the ones with the money, pay taxes.
international test cricket for the win.
Sorry, when was the last time an NFL player got killed when a bean beaned him in the face??
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
> So, will you be paying attention to the game today? Ignoring it? Practicing your cultivated disinterest?
Well lessee. Wife is the football fanatic in the family. The only one in the family who actually watches the sport, in fact. Wife is making snacks.... Wife makes pretty good snacks, and is highly motivated on Superbowl Sunday.
And so, I skipped dinner last night and breakfast this morning to save room for food this afternoon. But watch the game? It's noisy and boring. That's not out of some affected "cultivated disinterest", it's because football is noisy and boring.
I have some photos to process, a script to write and a laptop to fix. But I won't be hungry.
(For some reason, I kept writing "snakes" instead of "snacks" above and had to go back and correct it. Hopefully that's not prophetic...)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Dying is for quitters.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
ooh, snap
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Asshats all the way down.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I road race bicycles. I don't even watch Tour de France when that time of year comes around, except maybe the half-hour stage highlights, but even then only when I've got nothing better to do or watch, let alone watching any other pro cycling events on TV. I sure don't go out of my way to watch any other pro sports either. The one exception is between sets at the gym, because that's what's on, and for 1 to 3 minutes there's nothing else to do or see. Honestly, I don't really get the interest in sitting for hours watching some other guys playing sports on TV; I'd rather be out doing it myself.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This is merely one symptom of the bigger problem of our growing plutocracy. The rich get richer by using their size and power to tilt the laws and rulings their way in order to grow even richer such that they can use their size and power to tilt the laws and rulings their way in order to grow even richer such that they can use their size and power to tilt the laws and rulings their way in order to grow even richer such that they can use their size and power to tilt the laws and rulings their way in order to grow even richer such that they can use their size and power to tilt the laws and rulings their way in order to grow even richer such that ... you get the idea.
Yes, it is a slippery slope. Inequality has sky-rocketed since about 1980 and the rich are tilting campaign laws and killing unions so that they can do more damage.
Table-ized A.I.
I particularly like the mounds of broken sticks that accumulate on the sideline during the game, mostly broken over the head of an opposing player.
Has been known to result in injuries to players.
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
"Deflategate" should have been solved quickly and decisively, before the Superbowl. Ignore. I'm not even watching the commercials. Not even online. Not even the ones with cute puppies.
I have similar feelings about the Olympics. It's fun to feel a part of something (national pride), but so much bribery and corruption goes in to choosing locations for the games, and so much effort and science goes in to cheating (with performance enhancing drugs), I find it hard to really get on board.
I'll be watching the Puppybowl on AnimalPlanet... The NFL can kiss my ass....
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
What game?
How would they bankrupt a person who they haven't got any successful ruling against yet? To get a successful ruling, they would still need to convince a judge that events from history, or mere facts, could actually ever be considered a form of intellectual property. They cannot be.... and this point is even explicitly stated in copyright law.
They are, of course, perfectly welcome to claim that they will prohibit it all they want to... the fact of the matter is, however, that they have precisely zero ability to actually enforce that prohibition except against people who believe that they ever had such power in the first place.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
ask that again when you've been lawyered to death. They will bleed you dry and you won't even have a judgement to show for it.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
hell, don't be too shocked if your own legal team files the petition against you - it's been known to happen:
http://www.yorkshireridingsmag...
Even solicitors can be declared bankrupt without judgement:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/36...
(not that that stops them from practising):
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/busi...
They probably went to the Donald Trump School of Hiding Wealth:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/cl...
(which was kinda handy for Ivana, who took half his assets - and none of the joint liabilities - in the divorce settlement)
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Bleed you dry how, exactly? At what point does stating the truth, that is specifically, that facts are not copyrightable, require paying a lawyer?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The no fly zone around the stadium is huge. From looking at the no fly zone you get the impression it's a selfie of the the superbowl's own ass just before they disappeared into it.
I actually like football however it's so ridiculously commercialized there is no need to "cultivate disinterest", the sheer bulk of advertisements ruin the flow of the game enough to make it uninteresting.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Yeah.... wild and crazy guy I am, right?
But seriously, we had major issues with our VMWare ESXi server on Friday night and when they finally got it back up and running properly, it wouldn't communicate with the FreeNAS server I set up as iSCSI storage for it.
I knew SuperBowl Sunday would be a nearly optimal time to take down servers and work on all of this without interrupting anybody, since normally - we've got people doing work via VPN over the weekends and at random, odd hours. Server or network maintenance is a huge pain for us....
Since several of my past girlfriends, not to mention my wife, are huge football fans, I've tried really hard to get into it myself over a period of many years. I have failed. Football just bores me out of my mind. This is not a cultivated disinterest, it's a genuine disinterest.
To successfully sue somebody, you still have to actually show how that party had actually done some sort of wrong by you...
Depends on your definition of "successfully". Even if you wouldn't win a suit in court, you can successfully sue somebody by dragging the whole thing out so long that they go bankrupt trying to defend themselves. Then you've won.
But I will never understand the histrionic obsession with a team based on living or being born within close proximity.
Particularly since teams have no real connection to the cities they are purportedly "from" anyway. The players aren't from those cities. In many cases, even the team as a business unit isn't from their city -- they've simply been purchased from somewhere else and moved.
I think it was Seinfeld who pointed out, quite correctly, that being a fan of a particular team is really nothing more than being a fan of their laundry (the uniform).
"You've probably heard the warning about how "descriptions" and "accounts" of the game are prohibited without the NFL's consent."
This is a misreading of the statement. What it actually says is that use of THESE descriptions and accounts is prohibited. In other words, you can't quote their words or use their images without consent. They NFL is claiming copyright on the contents of the broadcast, which is perfectly within its rights. Exceptions would exist for journalistic use, but I'm sure that all the major newspapers and broadcasters have obtained consent in any case.
Independently talking about the game without using their words is perfectly legal. Lots of people do it. Using images that didn't come from the NFL would also be legal if there were some good way to obtain them in the first place, but because the league restricts the use of recording devices at the stadium (within their rights because it is private property) those third party game images do not exist.
You do have to be careful how you use the words "Super Bowl" because of trademark law. Using the term to talk about the game itself is fine, but using it in connection with your own non-NFL-sponsored event or promotion is not. You can't have a Super Bowl public party or a Super Bowl sale, which is why you hear so much talk of the Big Game.
If you actually had the resources to fight that case you would have won. The Supreme Court recently reaffirmed the First Sale Doctrine, which basically says that once you buy a physical object like a book you are free to do whatever you please with it. Their license is invalid under US law and cannot be enforced.
None of that helps you in practice. The publishers are counting on the fact that few people have the resources to fight them.
And where can I watch the ads?
the second the claim form is served on you.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
If you want a practical demonstration of the effectiveness of hype / propaganda, go to New Zealand or Hong Kong or Paris a week before the Superbowl. You won't hear a word about it. It's like it didn't even exist. So the difference is: the noise we allow into our heads in North America about things like the Superbowl that amount to less than 'doesn't matter' almost everywhere else.
Only boring people are ever bored.
How does a claim form being served on you cost you any money if you haven't hired a lawyer? And why should you require a lawyer to simply say what is genuinely factual, that is, that facts and historical events are not copyrightable property, and the NFL can only claim ownership over their presentation of those facts, they have absolutely no jurisdiction over the facts themselves?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You would only go bankrupt if you are paying a lawyer. You don't need a lawyer to state what is simple objective truth, that is, that facts are not actually copyrightable. The NFL is perfectly welcome to claim that they prohibit it, but they have precisely zero ability to actually enforce that except against people who either can't be bothered to stand up for themselves, or are too fearful to because they believe that the NFL might have such jurisdiction. They do not. I know that. And I know beyond any shadow of doubt, to the point that I would willfully stake even my very life on it, that it would cost me precisely zero dollars to educate their lawyers of this fact. Of course, it won't come down to that, because they know that they really don't have that ability, and the instant that anybody actually ever tried to point this out to them, they would back down in heartbeat to avoid the legal expense it would incur.
It should be criminal to sue somebody over a matter that you actually have no lawfully recognized jurisdiction in, but it often isn't... and so the NFL can continue to get away with such tactics for as long as people are either too ignorant to realize that they do not have such authority or are too indifferent to bother to try to defend themselves.
They would not get with it with me, however.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
argue it with the NFL's lawyers, I'm not here to do your defence for you.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Who suggested that I needed anybody here to defend what I'm saying? if NFL's lawyers actually came down on me for daring to describing a game that they had televised to somebody else (they probably wouldn't even ever do that, but let's say just assume that they did), I would expediently point out those facts to them, at which point they would promptly drop any intention of pursing it further, since I would have shown that I won't be backing down,and would only be costing them money to try and make a case they couldn't actually prove in court.
Their cost = lawyers fees. My cost = $0.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That's the theory. Has it ever been enforced?
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Some large tournament for ten-pin bowling? Or that variant of cricket that you play over there (but I thought you called bowling "pitching")?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"