MEPs deny sports 'intellectual property' landgrab

MEPs today voted against* a bigger role for intellectual property in sports, stoking a copyright head-to-head between the powerful governing bodies of world sport and the media organisations that seek to report it. As sport has become big business, the corporations that run it are seeking greater control over how events are …

[Anonymous Coward]

it's already made me stop watching sports...

I used to be a total MotoGP motorcycle racing fanatic until Dorna started stepping on websites for reporting anything more than bare order of finish and the rather insulting canned team press releases.

As it's the variety of opinions and thoughts about the races that makes it enjoyable for me, I just totally lost interest.

I haven't watched the Olympics in 12 years for similar reasons. If they want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, more power to 'em.

[Joe Stalin]

We all know the answer

Don't watch the sports. Once the public stop watching and the money starts to dry up they'll start to give the public a better service

[Anonymous Coward]

Poppycock!

Iain Connor, an intellectual property partner at law firm Pinsent Masons, said: "A football match is not a performance for the purposes of copyright because you can't reproduce it. It isn't choreographed."

Not choreographed? He's obviously never really watched Prem/Euro matches then... all that diving, feigning injury, claiming free-kicks/penalties for absolutely nothing and specifically ManU always getting the benefit of the doubt is nothing short of a performance and is reproduced every match without fail!

Mines the one hiding the infamous 'Zebra' shirt with Kalamazoo on the front!

[Cris Page]

Forgotten fans

One day sports will learn that the strangulation employed by "rights holders" drives fans away. Where is the fans right to unbiased as it happens reporting? Its time the corporate suits realised that without a following the rights to any sport are worth Squat! Maybe if more fans had the backbone to "walk away" then the suits would have to think again.

[Luther Blissett]

'Intellectual property 'landgrab' '?

Recursion is not well supported by natural languages. Call it pigopolists wanting to have their snouts in other pigopolists' troughs, and you can dispense with all the inverted commas.

It was inevitable that talk of "rights" would lead to non-persons such as corporations wanting to get in on the act - and likewise insisting that Governments guarantee their "rights". No longer happy being global monopoly capitalists, they want their profits guaranteed for them. Alistair, Darling, would you mind just bending over a bit further? Now you've had Northen Crock, you won't notice us at it one bit.

[Carl Greatbatch]

Hence why football league club websites are shite...

As if most football clubs outside the Prem weren't being strangled by their useless wheeler-dealer second-hand-car-dealer owners as it was, modern business practice came along and made things immeasurably worse by handing out legal abilities to hound dissenting fans and destroy the community that is their only reason to exist.

Lovely.

@2nd AC: Another Vale fan on The Reg? Wonders really will never cease...

Skull & crossbones because death would have been better than a season with a return to the basement whilst Stoke got promotion.

[Steve]

There could be a problem here

Have these clubs all got contracts where the players have signed over the rights to this IP?

They are arguably the original source of their own IP (their movements as they play) and the team then combines this IP with their own IP (stadium, kit etc) to make the final IP (the complete experience of watching the game).

And what the hell happens when someone crosses the ball in for a header? Does the scorer owe money to the guy who made the cross as the goal would have been impossible without the IP of the original cross? If the goalie saves the shot is he liable for causing the shooter a loss of profit? The IP of a goal is clearly worth more the shooter than the IP of a saved shot.

Inquiring minds demand to be told!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just following the celeb precedent

If you don't say exactly what we want, say goodbye to access

I wonder how much money and sponsorship the Premiership, olympics, rugby world cup etc, gets because of media support. The media industry should withdraw all sports coverage until these jokers wise up

[Steve B]

Who keeps paying then?

I seem to remember a very popular fighter called Prince. Everyone in the UK used to watch the fights, talk about him, loved him even. Then came PPV and the chap disappeared into oblivion.

I haven't been to a live football match for many years due to the silly prices. They may mean nothing to the very highly paid city workers but it is well over a half days work for those on MW.. Similarly Speedway, stock cars - used to be very well supported, then came the price rises and away went the crowds.

One assumes that this directive is after protecting the periphery information about the event, ie you can't report that or tell anyone about it until you pay me first. The outcome - more money changing hands for the same situation as exists, but less people willing to part with the hard earned, hence the market goes down leading to higher prices leading to smaller audience.

Look at snooker (no one else does) used to be a boring sport until along came the hurricane who livened it up, some other great entertainers like 15 pint a frame Bill W, TV lapped it up, but then snooker got up its own with dress codes, drink codes, advertising codes, ad nauseum. Anyone apart from their mums watch any games other than Ronnie in the latest world championship? Even the TV people can't be bothered to cover it properly and it is the cheapest program to make. Our major local snooker club has just shut up shop due to lack of interest.

Darts went the same way, it was a man's game played with beer in one hand and fag hanging out 'yer mouth. Them blokes on telly were just like us but could hit the board more often! It was big business and the drunken exchanges on TV were good entertainment, they even wrote a song about Jockie Wilson! and then it tidied up its act. Now it is big business for about 8 players and the promoter. Most pubs and clubs here don't even have a dart board anymore. Again cheap TV to make, but even the World championships don't inspire decent terrestrial coverage.

Come to think of it, I can now understand why the sports promoters want to protect their ability to wring the last little drop

[Mark]

The real game is greed

You just know it's a lost cause when they spend longer reporting the financial results for sport than they do the scorelines. I've given up on most of the sports I used to watch, in part due to a refusal to pay Rupert, in part because I'm sick of the tedious 'added-value' theatrics. sport in general could do with a sense of proportion. It really is only a fucking game.

[Sebastian Brosig]

IP?

i thought the "I" was for intellectual? Surely nowt to do with football?

yes thanks mine's the grey one there.

[peter]

Don't forget - News reporting is a business too.

"Journalists' groups suspect it will be the executives who sit on the governing boards of sports that have grown rich on their fans' enthusiasm"

Its is not as if they and their medial barons bosses are growing rich on the fans' enthusiasm as well is it? All we have is is one business seeing an oportunity to make more money and another business seeing that oportunity as a threat to their profit. Ho hum.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Corporate Rights

"It was inevitable that talk of "rights" would lead to non-persons such as corporations wanting to get in on the act "

Notice how the European Fundamental rights changed:

1950 The European Convention on Human Rights

http://www.hri.org/docs/ECHR50.html

2000 The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/default_en.htm

They dropped the word 'Human' (so corps can get stuff like the right to free speech) and added 'Intellectual property shall be protected', as though the right to license an idea is 'property' and the right to license that 'property' is somehow a fundamental requirement of human beings.

What a joke they made of human rights legislation.

[Slaine]

intellectual property?

Ask any premier league footballer about his views on "intellectual property" and I bet you get the same result from any of them: "ug !! um !! i just poot da ball in da nett coz dats wot i kan doo best"

I despise our government and every power-mad bloodsucking leech contained therein. That's MY personal opinion and I'm entitled to it. However, I hereby relinquish any form of potential copyright that may be associated with this, my intellectual property, to enable every one else to be at liberty to think the same thought as me.

Just checking my pockets for some salt to put out for the leeches.