He intends to tweet as much as possible. Beware: that includes upcoming picks before they are revealed on TV (if he gets them) to his nearly 300,000 followers. He also will be contributing updates to CBSSports.com.

"We're not a broadcast partner for the draft," La Canfora said. "I will be trying to get the information out as quickly and accurately as possible. What event is made more for Twitter than the NFL draft? If the teams have the information; if the guys in the production truck have the information; if the commissioner has the information; why wouldn't passionate football fans want it as well?"

CEO Amy Trask announced yesterday that the Raiders will be eliminating nearly 10,000 seats for next season, mostly by covering up Mount Davis with a tarp. Mount Davis is the nickname given to the tier of seats installed in a 1996 renovation, ruining the backdrop view of the Oakland hills that were a staple at A's games. They're steep (nearly to the point of being unsafe) and the upper reaches are comically distant from the action. And they've gone mostly empty, being tarped off for baseball since 2006.

Go to the game. If you are a Chargers, Jaguars or Bengals fan, this involves purchasing a ticket and driving to the stadium. There are websites that teach you how to do these things. Anyway, once there, wait for the replacement officials to make an idiotic call or lapse into one of their marathon delays. When it happens, start singing:

Nah nah nah na-na-na-nah, na-na-na-nah, Hey Jude!

Beatles copyrights (held mostly by Paul McCartney and the estate of John Lennon) and publishing rights (held by Paul, Sony/ATV publishing, and possibly by one or two of Michael Jackson’s former chimpanzees) are among the most closely guarded music rights in the world. “Hey Jude” is the most preciously protected song in the Beatles catalogue. Everyone knows it, and it is easy for a huge crowd to sing, as Paul himself proved when he led Olympic fans in a chorus of a song first recorded 15 years before their parents reached puberty.

If the crowd at an NFL game sings “Hey Jude,” television networks will be stuck broadcasting “Hey Jude” without the rights-holders permission. The sound editors are pretty good at obscuring the B.S. chant, but that only takes a little bit of white noise. Try editing away one of the most recognizable melodies in the world on live television. The broadcast will sound like it is coming from Venus. But if the NFL doesn’t drown out the singing, someone big and powerful is going to show up at league headquarters in a suing mood.

Faced with the choice of a battle against Big Music Publishing and the fourth most beloved human on earth (wedged between Ron Howard and … wow … T.J. Lang) or negotiating fairly with the referees, the NFL will be left with no choice. The lockout will end, thanks to you and the Cute Beatle.

I am no copyright lawyer, and there are probably holes in this master plan. But if the NFL can publish a mix of lies and obfuscations and call it an “explanation,” then I can publish this and call it a “solution.”

Those who bought games for a PlayStation 2, original Xbox or Nintendo GameCube could receive up to $6.79 per title. Games purchased for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii will garner a $1.95 refund, reports USA Today.

In a statement, law firm Hagens Berman says EA will create a $27 million fund for players who purchased a recent copy of any Madden NFL, NCAA Football or Arena Football title.

Of course, the NFL's position is nonsense -- this is a nominative use that is just as permissible as, for example, referring to the "Chicago Bulls" instead of "the two-time world champions" or "the professional basketball team from Chicago" (Judge Kozinski's example from a different era, when the Bulls mattered).

Instead of praising retailers who skate close to the edge, we should take a page from David Bollier’s excellent Brand Name Bullies and call them Brand Name Weenies.   Indeed, it is disappointing that a major metropolitan newspaper that belongs to an 800 pound gorilla like the New York Times Company is unwilling to defy the NFL by using the term in in its advertising.  The Times and the Globe certainly advertise their coverage of the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, also trademarked names.  If big players like the Times don’t have the cojones to stand up for bullying from the NFL, they make it harder for everybody else.  
 
In their recent book Reclaiming Fair Use, Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi warn that when we refrain from exercising our fair use rights, and act as if those rights do not exist, we help create a culture in which fair use loses ground to overly aggressive copyright enforcement.  The same is true in the trademark realm.  We can only hope that when the next Superbowl rolls around, the Times and its brethren, and even the HDTV sellers, will have shed their timidity.

Additionally, Yonjo Quiroa, 28, of Comstock Park, Mich., was arrested Wednesday by special agents with HSI. He is charged with one count of criminal infringement of a copyright related to his operation of websites that illegally streamed live sporting event telecasts and pay-per-view events over the Internet. Quiroa operated nine of the 16 streaming websites that were seized, and he operated them from his home in Michigan until yesterday's arrest.

The website seizures during Operation Fake Sweep represent the 10th phase of Operation In Our Sites, a sustained law enforcement initiative targeting counterfeiting and piracy on the Internet. The 307 websites are in the process of being seized by law enforcement, and will soon be in the custody of the federal government. Visitors to these websites will then find a seizure banner that notifies them that the domain name has been seized by federal authorities and educates them that willful copyright infringement is a federal crime.

"As far as I can tell, the only purpose gate security has is to create a mass of humanity at the entrances and comb through women's purses. The pat downs are jokes. Security personnel only checked from the waist up. If they felt anything in your pocket, their most likely recourse was to ask, "what's that?" A halfway-decent answer got you a pass."

Directly relevant to this case, the teams compete in the market for intellectual property. To a firm making hats, the Saints and the Colts are two potentially competing suppliers of valuable trademarks. When each NFL team licenses its intellectual property, it is not pursuing the "common interests of the whole" league but is instead pursuing interests of each "corporation itself," Copperweld, 467 U. S., at 770; teams are acting as "separate economic actors pursuing separate economic interests," and each team therefore is a potential "independent cente[r] of decisionmaking," id., at 769. Decisions by NFL teams to license their separately owned trademarks collectively and to only one vendor are decisions that "depriv[e] the marketplace of independent centers of decisionmaking," ibid., and therefore of actual or potential competition.

"Sure, a fleur de lis can belong to the Saints, but in very specific usage, and everybody knows what that is," Monistere explained. "If you go back to 1967, to date, they have registered and used the fleur de lis in a very specific way. They put it on the Saints helmet and on the Saints 'shield.' Its colors are very specific -- they're 'old gold and black.' But for the NFL to expand that definition and say that no matter what color and what style of fleur de lis, if you put it on an item, it means Saints, it is, as many believe, is just not correct. The fleur de lis belongs to everyone including the people of New Orleans.

"Here we are going to the Superbowl for the first time in 43 years and these NFL guys are here harassing the local small businesses," Monistere said. "Their merchandise sales are well over $320 BILLION a year! The NFL has become an intellectual property company. They make money selling their logos and image. With that kind of money coming in, they focus their attention on Fleurty Girl? I don't have a problem with them protecting their intellectual property, but when they do it to the extent of trying to intimidate people into believing that the Fleur de lis is theirs -- well, that's just a bullying technique."

The NFL originally won the case because the lower courts decided that, when it comes to marketing hats and gear, the 32 teams in the league act like one big company, a "single entity," and such an entity can't illegally conspire with itself to restrain trade. The NFL-Reebok deal is worth a lot of money, and fans pay for it: If you want to show support for your team by buying an official hat, it now costs $10 more than before the exclusive arrangement.

Amazingly, after the NFL won the case, it asked the Supreme Court to dramatically expand the ruling and determine that the teams act as a single entity not only for marketing hats and gear, but for pretty much everything the league does. It was an odd request -- as if I asked an official to review an 80-yard pass of mine that had already been ruled a touchdown. The notion that the teams function as a single entity is absurd; the 32 organizations composing the NFL and the business people who run them compete with unrelenting intensity for players, coaches and, most of all, the loyalty of fans.

"1 play in the 1st Half, 4 plays in the 2nd half,.... A bit disappointed about my playing time but very happy and satisfied about the win."