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Thou Shalt Not View The Super Bowl on a 56" Screen
Posted by
Zonk
on Saturday February 02, @06:40PM
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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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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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)
Re:Why can live sports events be copyrighted? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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.
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)
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
Re:CAUGHT! (Score:5, Funny)
Cops? No. Lawyers, yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah, screw those churches! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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.
Re:Good luck with that, NFL (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:2007 (Score:5, Insightful)