from the shot-in-the-foot dept
In a world where the traditional lines of "journalism" are becoming increasingly blurred, Justin Rice, over at the Nieman Journalism Lab, discusses how the "media tables are turning in the world of sports, where the subjects of coverage are becoming the creators of coverage." With tools like blogs and twitter, professional athletes are now, more than ever before, able to communicate directly with their legions of fans. The ability to self-publish has strangely drawn the ire of sporting organizations. For example, during the Olympics, the IOC placed burdensome restrictions on the blogging activities of the athletes, rendering many of the athletes mute out of frustration. We've seen in the past that both the MLB and the NFL have tried to copyright facts, something that thankfully, the courts have struck down. Furthermore, the MLB and NFL have limited the length of clips that news outlets can use in their reports.
While Rice correctly points out that these issues are not simply First Amendment issues, since they also involve "contract law, intellectual property law and copyright law." The bigger issue here is that while there certainly is plenty of legal work here to line plenty of lawyers' pockets, what these sporting organizations need to realize is that they are shooting themselves in the foot. Promoting the free distribution of the facts, videos, and stories surrounding their sporting events will only serve to promote those sporting events more. These restrictions merely serve to hamstring any sort of development that may actually deepen fans' relationship with the sporting franchise. It seems completely counterintuitive that if an athlete were willing and able to spend hours of time creating valuable content at no additional cost to anyone, that it would be quashed. If anything, athletes and journalists should be encouraged to share more video, stories and tweets with their fans.
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