Premier League wants to PURGE ALL FOOTIE GIFs from social media The English Premier League is working to design new software which will stop piratical football fans uploading footage of goals to Vine or social media. It has apologised for being a "killjoy" after warning fans that spaffing images of goals all over the internet is a breach of copyright. Now it is developing software to …
IANAL but is it actually a breach of copyright? There are narrow exemptions in UK law for fair dealing particularly for news reporting. If they were posting the entire match then that would clearly be a breach, but given they are only posting 6 second chunks that is about 0.1% of the copyrighted product.
@Mr Hill. goto 9gag :) plenty of gifs there !!
@ Mole,
not sure why your replying to Mr Hill's comment as you talked about something completely unrelated, if were cynical about the whole thing my presumption would be you want ed to have your comment read at the top of the page instead of being 4 comments down ....
and in reply to your comment, all they would need to do is ban filming of the event therefore resolving any legal issues.
not sure why your replying to Mr Hill's comment as you talked about something completely unrelated , if were cynical about the whole thing my presumption would be you want ed to have your comment read at the top of the page instead of being 4 comments down ....
Pot, meet Kettle.
@Lionel
Like Luis Suarez, your excuses just don't ring true ...
> my reply actually had something to do with the previous post
It looks to me like you prefaced your off-topic reply with a throw away comment in an attempt to cover yourself in case of criticism. I would suggest that pointing out an internet site which contains funny GIFs hardly contributes to the discussion.
> I wasn't replying just to try and grab the second spot on the page
Funny, I get exactly the opposite impression.
If you felt strongly about perceived attention seeking in others, then the proper thing to do would be to start a newly titled comment. If your motive was draw attention to yourself by criticising a fellow Commentard, then you've succeeded. Unfortunately, calling another's motivation into question attracts the wrong kind of attention.
You've been here long enough to know better. The Register's message boards are thankfully free of the pettiness you exhibited and I, for one, would like them to remain that way.
Fink, you are a dick.
Lionel Baden was responding to the attention seeking Mole's completely spurious response to a question about GIF's.
When you respond to the content of somebodies comment you hit the reply button and respond. You do not start a completely new thread.
When your comment has absolutely nothing to do with a comment you start a new thread, you do not hit reply so that you comment appears near the top of the page.
> Fink, you are a dick.
> Lionel Baden was responding to the attention seeking Mole's completely spurious response to a question about GIF's.
If doubting that El Reg benefits by self-appointed forum police making pronouncements on the motives behind other's posts makes me a dick, then so be it.
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@Fink-Nottle.
>It looks to me like you prefaced your off-topic reply with a throw away comment in an attempt to cover yourself in case of criticism. I would suggest that pointing out an internet site which contains funny GIFs hardly contributes to the discussion.
If you check the reply (click on the arrow to the left of my comment) you will see i was actually replying to you. And a website that contains thousands of gif images in response to "who uses gifs anyway" is actually pretty damn spot on the mark !
How is it breach of copyright in any way? I imagine that there is a condition in the small print on the back of the ticket that denies all photography, but that is mere breach of contract.
I don't suppose that a football stadium counts as a "public place" but if it did then the photographer would be in the clear.
The interview on Radio 4 this morning was talking about posting video clips obtained from television coverage onto YouTube or other social media. With no fair-use provision in UK copyright law, any video obtained from transmitted material that is redistributed is a breach of copyright, unless allowed by a specific waiver of copyright.
What is not copyright breach is using a phone in the ground to record part of the match, and then posting that. That may breach the terms and conditions of the ticket, but would not be a copyright offence (unless the owners of the advertising objected to that appearing - but they'd be stupid to complain about wider distribution of their adverts!)
"With no fair-use provision in UK copyright law"
Wow, is that right? If so, that completely sucks. To be fair, a highlights reel of a single match is anyway difficult to shoehorn in as fair use, but some goals / actions + added comment on player positioning etc surely could count as educational use?
And what about Premier League footage that is broadcast, captured and uploaded in a country where fair use exemptions DO exist? Of course in that case, still accessible in UK. Can of worms!
There is the right to (very restricted) quotation for journalistic or scholastic or critical purposes, but no general 'fair use', which is just as well, as 'fair use' is seen as 'I am pure of heart, so I will help myself.'
When I was in publishing, I used to have to count the lines of poetry in a poem being quoted by a contributor to meet the boundary of 'quotation used for...' rules.
"What is not copyright breach is using a phone in the ground to record part of the match, and then posting that. That may breach the terms and conditions of the ticket, but would not be a copyright offence (unless the owners of the advertising objected to that appearing - but they'd be stupid to complain about wider distribution of their adverts!)"
I may be wrong, but from what I can gather, it CAN be a copyright breach because of two things.
1. Most stadia I know about are at least partially privately owned. Thus photography and videography rights can be restricted on account of that ownership. Just as one can't normally take a picture of the interior of a domicile without permission.
2. A video recording or photograph is recognized as a work of art and thus is subject to copyright. Thus the owner of a location can sell the photography rights to events held in their location. Museums employ this restriction also IIRC.
Yes, a football stadium would count as a public place in this sense, exactly the same as any other venue where an even is staged, because tickets are available to the general public.
But that's a red herring in any case. The private place/public place issue is a privacy matter, not a copyright matter. Copyright *always* belongs to the person who creates the image (or sequence of images) and not the performer.
This story would seem to be about people sharing images or clips created by the TV companyand therefore owned by them, which have been broadcast over the internet, not images or clips surreptitiously caught by spectators on their own devices. Either that, or Murdoch's legal team are laughably clueless and sadly I don't believe that to be the case, funny as it would be.
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Correct, because in Freudian terms it is the actual lawyers that tend to have the anal personalities, rather than the people who tell you they aren't.
However, back on topic, none of them would appear to be half so anal as the Football Association. It is a pity that the original amateurs who invented the game couldn't have copyleft it so that nobody could profit from it.
Who is posting GIF's in this day and age?
All of the soccer GIFs I've seen are of international level players falling over like they're made of porcelain and throwing tantrums. It's really quite hilarious to see how undignified an overpaid adult human can be.
And that's understandably embarrassing for the sport. They could stamp it out... or I guess they could do this.
I'm pretty sure that automated routines can pick out that a video is of a football game with decent success especially if it's the 'standard' pitch orientation in most feeds. But how do they know it's a Premier League match, not someone filming their local pub league? If it's the official live feed there's team names in the top corner but if it's someone filmig the TV with their phone, or getting the official feed and distorting the top corner before uploading, how to tell?
> we have to protect our intellectual property.
It's not often your hear "intellectual" being used in an article about football.
But, heigh-ho - I suppose if they can find a way to block stuff that *they* have a right to - but not, say, of little Johnny knocking one into the back of the net at the local park - then good luck to 'em
It's odd though. You'd have hoped there would be more to a football match: 90 minutes and £40 than just a few seconds of a ball moving from a boot (or head, or <ahem> hand) to a net. Makes you wonder whether the entire 39 week soccer season couldn't just be telescoped down into a 5 minute mass-kicking sometime in May. You'd get all the goals and it would save a whole lot of tedious traveling, speculation, punditry and disappointment.
"But, heigh-ho - I suppose if they can find a way to block stuff that *they* have a right to - but not, say, of little Johnny knocking one into the back of the net at the local park - then good luck to 'em"
Or do like everybody else in the media.. And send takedown notices to all qualifying images.. Including little Johnny kicking a ball round the back garden.
Little bit of work to rule might be spamming Youtube and other similar places with blindingly obvious not what ever it is league videos, and seeing how long before Youtube gets sent a nastygram.
Calling the competing press to make a storm in a teacup about it is of course optional.
If a money takes a picture in an open location, the picture is public domain because animals cannot claim copyright (since they're not considered a being capable of recognizing the concept).
Meanwhile, a football match takes place in an at-least-semi-private location. That means it can restrict photography on the grounds. Museums do it, too.
So if a monkey takes a picture of a goal, then the copyright belongs to the stadium because of the premises provision.
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IIRC, this did come up some years ago (in relation of satellite rebroadcasts or similar) and it basically came down to "It's the on-screen graphics which are copyrighted" - leaving them open to "if you can rebroadcast it without the graphics or pitchside sponsor logos, then you /may/ be clear"
Isn't that what ultimately did for the non-UK based satellite services offering Premier League games cheaply to pubs? The broadcasting and receiving of them was OK, but as soon as the Premier League logo appears, it became breach of copyright and therefore illegal to show. I would of thought the same thing applies here, incl. Sky logos and any other advertising, team logo's and presumably any breach of image rights the players may have.
Sorry state of affairs though and just one more reason to hate Murdoch and the Premier league. best league in the World my arse.
"So the guys kicking the ball are over paid actors and the entire event is scripted?"
They could argue that it's sort of improvisational theatre where the 'actors' have some general guidelines but act autonomously / spontaneously during the 'performance'. So, yes I would say that their official feed is legally copyrightable without having to refer to on-screen graphics.
Anything a fan shoots on their own camera though, is copyright to whoever films it, it highly pisses me off when for example FIFA were taking down World Cp videos shot by fans. There's also the news/public interest angle. If an event is newsworthy I don't see why a member of the public filming it should be restricted by copyright law.
The Premier League or rights holder can very simply sign up to Vine for clips and tumblr for gifs and simply post the goals a split-second before the rest of the world. If world+dog can do it, there's no reason Sky and co can't.
They'll get all the followers and in doing so undermine the 'black market' (grey as it is)
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