Are you a Premier League soccer fan, or should I say, Premier League football fan? You might want to think long and hard before you post that next spectacular goal on your social media pages.
According to the BBC, the Premier League is warning fans about posting goals and other plays online. They claim it’s illegal and it violates copyright policy.? The thing is, with apps like Vines, recording these plays are easier to do than ever, and more people are copying and uploading them then ever. The Premier League has a legal point: It’s legally a copyright breach. But fans have been doing this for years. Why are they clamping down now?
Recently, BT, a top cable company in the United Kingdom, and BSkyB (ESPN2 of UK)? bought copyrights to Premier League games for approximately three billion pounds. That’s around $5 billion US dollars. British newspaper media The Sun and The Times? have a lot at stake too. It cost $13 a month to subscribe to Sun+. One of their main sale points: Premier League goals. They’re not even being subtle about why that want to crackdown on Tweeting goals. A senior Sun newspaper writer named Dean Scoggins said, “…we’ve obviously signed a very big deal with the Premier League to be a rights holder and to show it…”. Why are they surprised at this? Welcome to the 2010s, guys! Many people have access to smartphones and social media these days. You don’t think someone’s going to record a nice goal? Maybe they should have taken this into consideration before throwing billions of British pounds around. The fans taking these pictures don’t have billions of pounds to throw around. And are these Tweets violating the soccer stars’ copyright laws, too? I think not. I think this is another example of the very wealthy trying to cover their own hides from the regular fans. Do you think this ban is a good idea or a modern day witch hunt?