Any use of this article without the NFL's express written consent is prohibited: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

With the Super Bowl just concluded and baseball's spring training only weeks away, a question occurred to us: whatever happened to the push for copyright holders to tone down their copyright notices?

We hear and see the warnings whenever a football or baseball game is televised, whenever we read books, whenever we watch a movie. These are the sort of warnings that make claims like, "Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited," despite the apparent wrongheadedness of the statement. [ Read more ... ]

NFL Pulls Plug On Big-Screen Church Parties For Super Bowl - Via washingtonpost.com :

The NFL said, however, that the copyright law on its games is long-standing and the language read at the end of each game is well known: "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited."

The league bans public exhibitions of its games on TV sets or screens larger than 55 inches because smaller sets limit the audience size. The section of federal copyright law giving the NFL protection over the content of its programming exempts sports bars, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said. [ Read more ... ]

Exclusive Rights: The Wrong Goal for NFL: "

The NFL just doesn't know when to stop. The
Washington Post reports on a new NFL policy limiting journalists' use of video online:

In a move designed to protect the Internet operations of its 32 teams, the
pro football league has told news organizations that it will no longer
permit them to carry unlimited online video clips of players, coaches or
other officials, including video that the news organizations gather
themselves on a team's premises. News organizations can post no more than 45
seconds per day of video shot at a team's facilities, including news
conferences, interviews and practice-field reports.

Now this policy isn't copyright-based -- the NFL doesn't have copyright in the un-fixed statements of its players and coaches -- but good old real property law. The NFL teams own their facilities, and with them have the right to exclude people physically, as trespassers. So the NFL is telling sportswriters, who depend on physical access to gather the background for their stories, they'll be barred at the gates if they use more than 45 seconds of video online. [ Read more ... ]

Under NFL Rule, Media Web Sites Are Given Just 45 Seconds to Score: Thanks to a new NFL policy, something will soon be in short supply on news-media Web sites: video of almost anything related to the NFL or its players.

In a move designed to protect the Internet operations of its 32 teams, the pro football league has told news organizations that it will no longer permit them to carry unlimited online video clips of players, coaches or other officials, including video that the news organizations gather themselves on a team's premises. News organizations can post no more than 45 seconds per day of video shot at a team's facilities, including news conferences, interviews and practice-field reports.

The policy, announced last month with little fanfare, has frustrated journalists, who say it constricts the public's access to information about the nation's most popular spectator sport. A coalition of news organizations has been quietly lobbying the league for months to change the rule. [ Read more ... ]

NFL: Second Down and Goal?: "

Today, 12 business days after I re-sent my DMCA counter-notification, YouTube sent notice that they had restored my Super Bowl excerpt. Catch it while you can, because I'm not holding my breath that it will stay online this time either.

The chronology so far:

• Feb. 8: Post to blog and YouTube
• Feb. 14: Notice and Takedown
• Feb. 15: Counter-notification
• March 6: Put-back
• March 17: Second Down. Re-notification and re-counter.
• April 4: Back on the field with a second replacement.

By my count, that's 17 days up, 38 days down, not counting 'technical problems' that prevented access to the video on some days when it was not sidelined by a notification. [ Read more ... ]

NFL Caught Abusing the DMCA: "Implied Oral Consent writes 'You know how the NFL puts up those notices before every game saying 'This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience, and any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited?' Well, Ars Technica is reporting that Wendy Seltzer thought that that was over-reaching and posted a video of the notice on YouTube. [ Read more ... ]