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Thou Shalt Not View The Super Bowl on a 56" Screen
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Feb 02, 2008 06:40 PM
from the that's-like-the-fourteenth-commandment-right dept.
from the that's-like-the-fourteenth-commandment-right dept.
theodp writes "For 200 members of the Immanuel Bible Church and their friends, the annual Super Bowl party is over thanks to the NFL, which explained that airing NFL games at churches on large-screen TV sets violates the NFL copyright. Federal copyright law includes an exemption for sports bars, according to NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy, but churches are out of luck. Churchgoers who aren't averse to a little drinking-and-driving still have the opportunity to see the game together in public on a screen bigger than 55 inches."
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Games: The Physics of Football 163 comments
Ponca City, We Love You writes "There will be a program on applied physics and real time strategy that you might want to watch on television today. Conservation of momentum during elastic and inelastic collisions is one aspect on which to focus as players tackle their opponents. It is of critical importance that the Patriots bring down New York's huge and powerful running back, 6-foot-4, 265-pound Brandon Jacobs. An average-size NFL defensive back's mass combined with his speed — on average, 4.56 seconds for the 40-yard dash — can produce up to 1600 pounds of tackling force. A tackle with half a ton of force may sound like a crippling blow, but the body can handle twice that amount because the player's equipment spreads out the incoming energy, lessening its severity."
Nanotech specialists from Cornell have developed their own take on the "physics" of the Super Bowl by creating the world's smallest trophy, which will be awarded today to a contestant who best explains an aspect of football physics. Just some food for thought while you watch the game on your brand new HD television, though you'd better not be watching it in a church.
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Good luck with that, NFL (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope the NFL enforces this across America. Since most people are apparently too stupid to notice how the greedy bastards are taking away their freedoms, maybe this will wake more than a few of them up.
Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Yeah, screw those churches! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Yeah, screw those churches! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, and I kid you not, the fundamentalist southern baptist church that I went to when I was younger and still under the thumb of my parents did exactly what you're saying.
Seriously, they figured that people would be watching the superbowl, and that's UNACCEPTABLE! Why? BECAUSE THE ADS ARE FOR BEER. Can't have good christians watching advertisements with frogs saying "Bud", now can we? So they showed the superbowl up on the wall of the gathering area at the church with a projector, and during the commercials, they'd instead air mini-commercials about jesus that the youth group had put together.
Yeah. No joke. Wild.
~Wx
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Re:Ah, I read a different article where they were. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that it doesn't affect ratings. Even if you are using one of the automated boxes, AFAIK, they still provide diaries for when you view something on another set. All you have to do is fill in that you watched it elsewhere.
This is just the NFL being dumbasses, period.
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Insightful)
-uso.
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They bought themselves a law! (Score:5, Informative)
(emphasis added)
They're correctly reading the law, as sad as it might be. Now, the law here is ridiculous, there's NO question in my mind about that. There are plenty of other ridiculous provisions in there just like this one. Alas, we have the best laws money can buy
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Re:They bought themselves a law! (Score:5, Interesting)
So, 5.1 is out then too?
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Re:They bought themselves a law! (Score:5, Informative)
The law probably needs an updating but it would be highly unusual if it didn't get updated with the best laws money can buy. This law, seeing how it was from 1975 seems to actually have the interest of the people in mind.
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Interesting)
I think they do this not because you are going to charge admission but because it adds value that wasn't there before or without it. Interestingly, your supposed to pay for the use of over the air broadcasts in these commercial situations too. Even if your a noncommercial establishment but have the require seating capacity to be considered commercial for this purpose. I have seen royalty checks go out to radio stations because they played the radio on hold for the phone systems at a certain company.
You probably haven't noticed this stuff because rarely is there an organization like the NFL who is greedy enough to think they need to demand the fees in public from everyone rather accept that some viewers won't be counted and they will make an ass load of money anyways. Remember last year when they sent take down notices and sued a couple people for trademark infringement when advertising Super bowl parties?
Maybe it is time to start an unofficial boycott of the super bowl where people start writing advertisers claiming they won't buy any of their products because of the greed the super bowl has become and maybe plan a pledge drive or something that advertisers can show the super bowl people to get lower rates next year. Maybe when their 5 million dollar spot only brings 2 million they would get the idea that actions like banning churches and nonprofits and so on, and regulating screen sizes isn't in the best interest of their bottom line. I seriously doubt you could get a complete boycott of the game, so working to get something together to give advertisers the ability to pay less would probably work better. I would be willing to write all the advertisers claiming I wouldn't buy their product (even though I probably would) because of the NFLs policies and the way their payment of large fees enables their behavior that we find negetive. The NFL would get the hint.
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. It's on Fox. In fact, Fox is free over the air. The problem they have with it, is that instead of lets say 4 people per 1 TV, they might have 40 people per 1 TV, where there would have been 40 people split using 10 different TVs. I think ratings are only affected if Neilsen homes aren't watching it though. So it all really comes down to ratings. They'd rather see 10 homes watching the SB rather than 1 church.
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Interesting)
Monday night, we're going to use the commercial flagging in reverse - to skip the game and watch the commercials. Of course that's the once-a-year that the commercials are more worth watching than the event they're sponsoring. Come to think of it, most of the time both are about equally valueless.
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Funny)
As for the event itself
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's not, actually. Copyright law doesn't give any rights to the copyright holder with regard to private performances, so the copyright holder has nothing to license. In fact, even if he claimed that you couldn't watch the show privately on the basis of copyright law, you still could.
Only public performances fall under the ambit of copyright law.
Hell playing the radio in a Dr's office is technically infringing!
No, that would probably fall quite nicely into the 17 USC 110(5) "homestyle" exception.
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Interesting)
"Only public performances fall under the ambit of copyright law."
A couple of hundred people gathered in a church is a "public performance."
Especially since they're using it as an "outreach" to people who aren't regular church-goers. That makes it not only a public performance, but performance in return of expectation of a "good or valuable consideration".
The church is in the wrong here - like on so many other things.
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Insightful)
What's that? Silence?
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Insightful)
It has nothing about copyright law or redistribution rights, the notice that you refer to includes as well as the copyrighted telecast/radio broadcast and any relevant images, the right to discuss the game later on or tell people what the score was without the expressed written consent of the league.
Those aren't protections which US copyright law presently extends to anybody.
So no, it isn't a matter of the leagues protecting their legal rights in most cases it's a matter of them inventing new rights in order to coerce people to abide by their rules. Even the MPAA doesn't typically sue or send notices to church groups to not show their films. Or at least they have the sense not to allow those sorts of notices to go public like this.
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Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Interesting)
To make things clear, an old meme: copyright infringement isn't theft.
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its like the writers strike is causing repeats (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is last years article same story, different church:
http://sports.aol.com/fanhouse/category/miami-football/2007/02/01/nfl-orders-church-to-cancel-super-bowl-party/ [aol.com]
Re:its like the writers strike is causing repeats (Score:4, Interesting)
Is this now a yearly tradition for churches to whine about their Superbowl parties...
Yes. This follows the new yearly tradition of the NFL to abuse its copyright in a manner that can only suggest RIAA envy.
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Why can live sports events be copyrighted? (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, to be copyrighted, a work must be fixed into a "tangible medium." That is not the case for a live broadcast (although it might be for an after-the-fact replay).
Re:Why can live sports events be copyrighted? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Why can live sports events be copyrighted? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Why can live sports events be copyrighted? (Score:4, Informative)
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If that's the case... (Score:5, Insightful)
Since the only practical use of a broadcast is to view it, isn't such viewing (at least non-commercially) "fair use?" Why is it a copyright violation for a group of parishiners to watch together, but not for a family to do the same? Is a license required to view content carried over the public airwaves? (this isn't Great Britain!)
BTW, you totally missed/ignored the original point - a sports broadcast is functional, not creative.
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Debatable. (Score:5, Insightful)
IP law is, frankly, a mess. Either unify all the concepts into one single notion, OR sub-divide the existing categories into wholly uniform concepts. Force-fitting one idea into a mechanism never designed or intended to be used in such an abstract manner creates a great deal of confusion over what actually is permissible and makes rational discourse on what should be permissible difficult to impossible. I would argue for unification, partly because you are dealing with underlying principles but also because if the unification is valid and correct, it will remain valid and correct for any future technologies within the bounds for which it is defined. Splitting the categories up into much finer-grain notions would make each rule much easier to understand, much easier to follow and much easier to enforce rationally and fairly, but makes IP as a whole harder to conceptualize and doesn't scale well as new methods of delivering information emerge.
This church fiasco might - possibly - turn out quite useful if the level of resentment generated is sufficient to persuade the politicians that genuine reform (ie: not in the pockets of corporations) is in the interest of voters and therefore their own jobs. Narking a few churches off, though, probably isn't going to generate enough sustained ill-will to do anything beyond getting a few more people seriously drunk and lower that week's collection takings by a few dollars. Anyone who feels wronged on Sunday will have forgotten by Tuesday at the latest. No, the NFL would need to do something far more serious to do any good for the country.
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So... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh yay (Score:5, Funny)
I can truly understand this (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, the advertisements were set at an as low rate as $90,000 per second [nytimes.com].
Seriously, let's think of the NFL for once.
Pffft. This is easy. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pffft. This is easy. (Score:5, Funny)
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Thank god... (Score:5, Funny)
Why does nobody else play American Football? (Score:5, Funny)
Come to think of it, the other main US sport, Baseball, is not hugely popular around the world either. According to Wikipedia it is less popular than volleyball and table tennis. Maybe the US is onto something here. Perhaps we can copy this idea in Britain. We need to ditch the sports we keep losing at, like soccer, and invent a new one that nobody is interested in. Then we will finally be world champions
Best Defense: "So Sue Me!" (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's consider the worst scenario, the NFL does sue. So what?!?! Odds are that the NFL will lose and then there is a good chance the church could counter-sue and reclaim any costs incurred.
But, let's be realistic, it would be a PR suicide attempt for the NFL to sue a church. The only thing the church could do better then simply showing the game would be to bus in a load of poor, handicapped, cancer-inflicted children from broken homes. I'd like to see the NFL sue that!!
Re:CAUGHT! (Score:5, Funny)
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Cops? No. Lawyers, yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
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The end result? (Score:5, Funny)
And got crucified for it.
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Re:Superbowl (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:You heretics (Score:5, Funny)
The real WTF is, people in the USA watch football in churches? How the fuck is that not somehow blasphemous?
In some parts of the U.S., football is the dominant religion.
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Re:2007 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I'm Confused (Score:5, Insightful)
One poster commented that the NFL has a hard time making money. Well, from the picture of the church property, it does not appear that the church has that problem. It would be nice if the NFL could scam as well as the average christian churches in America. Selective reading lets then demand a tithe, but forget that Jesus destroyed the temple due to money changers in the church. Have American flags and patriotic paraphernalia in the church, but do everything they can to avoid paying taxes, even on clearly profit making activities. Agree to certain political limitations in exchange for the tax exempt status, and then, like the hypocrite, ignore those limitations as they please.
This is nothing more than a whiny church complaining that once they are being held to rules of civilized society. I know it is a new experience for most churches, having to comply with the rule of law, but it happens. They can buy a smaller screen. They can choose not to have such a secular event in a sacred space, and forgo the tithe that members who are mostly interested in secular events might bring. They can, like most churches, have such secular events outside of the sacred space.
Believe it or not, there are people in the world who have motives other than making the most money possible--such as making money by helping others in the best way they know how. I don't know why people have to ascribe negative motives to people who say they just want to help others. Not everyone else is like you. Just because you don't want to help people doesn't mean there aren't other people who do want to help people in the same way they have found help.
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