[Infowarrior] - IP: CCIA goes after the sports league "warnings"

[Richard Forno]

Sports leagues accused of deceptive warnings

By Greg Sandoval
http://news.com.com/Sports+leagues+accused+of+deceptive+warnings/2100-1026_3
-6200055.html

Story last modified Tue Jul 31 21:15:46 PDT 2007

A handful of sports leagues and media companies are trying to intimidate the
public when issuing inaccurate warnings about making "unauthorized" copies
of their work, according to a complaint expected to be filed with the
Federal Trade Commission.

The complaint, expected to be submitted Wednesday by the Computer &
Communications Industry Association (CCIA), a trade group that represents
such tech giants as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo, names the National Football
League, Major League Baseball, NBC-Universal, Morgan Creek Productions,
DreamWorks, Harcourt and Penguin.

An example of what CCIA is referring to is the little speech TV or radio
announcers make during breaks in games. Most sports fans can recite at least
a smidgen of the boilerplate.

"Any rebroadcast, reproduction or other use of the pictures and accounts of
this game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is
prohibited," is the MLB's copyright warning.

While the statements have become a tradition during professional football
and baseball broadcasts, the CCIA claims such statements are false and are
harmful to consumers and technology companies. Similar warnings can be found
in books, CDs and DVDS, according to the CCIA.

"These warnings intimidate average people and hinder free expression," the
CCIA in a statement. "They depict as illegal many legitimate and beneficial
uses made possible by the high-tech industry, and cast a pall over the
high-tech marketplace...These ubiquitous statements often include gross
misrepresentations of federal law and characterize as unlawful acts that are
explicitly permitted by law."

CCIA has asked the FTC to put an end to such practices.

Mark Litvack, a copyright attorney at the Los Angeles firm of Manatt, Phelps
& Phillips, said that he doubts CCIA is going to get anywhere with the
complaint.

"In most of the warnings, all they are saying is that unauthorized copying
is illegal and it almost always is," said Litvack, who has represented such
copyright owners as Sony, Time Warner and Disney. "For example, you're
allowed to make a backup copy for your own use. I'm not aware of any law
that says you are allowed to make a copy to share with a friend. That has
never been held to be legal."

It's unlikely that many people pay attention to the copyright warnings. But
if the issue seems a tad granular, it's only the latest example of how far
tech companies and copyright holders are willing to go to defend their turf
in the ongoing battle over copyright law.

Copyright is one of the burning issues in Silicon Valley and Hollywood, with
court cases such as the one between YouTube and Viacom and the motion
picture's copyright suit against TorrentSpy, a BitTorrent search engine.