[Infowarrior] - Leagues See Bloggers in the Bleachers as a Threat

[Richard Forno]

August 20, 2009
Leagues See Bloggers in the Bleachers as a Threat
By KEN BELSON and TIM ARANGO
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/sports/ncaafootball/20rights.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print
Camera phones, hand-held video cameras and social networking sites  
like Twitter have turned sports fans with Web sites into instant  
reporters and broadcasters. But one of the nation’s leading college  
leagues is drawing a line in the turf.

The Southeastern Conference, home to some of the nation’s most  
prominent and lucrative university athletic programs, has issued rules  
in the past week prohibiting fans from distributing photographs or  
video of its games in real time for commercial use. Like a growing  
number of pro and college teams nationwide, the conference sees money  
to be made online from the exploits of its athletes.

The rules are aimed not at the casual fan who might post a few  
pictures of Saturday’s football game on a personal Web site, but  
rather those who copy television broadcasts, create their own  
highlight reels and post them on sites charging for access or  
advertising.

That is no small number. Prominent teams can each have hundreds of  
unofficial fan Web sites, some updated and visited around the clock.  
The University of Florida’s Gators, who compete in the Southeastern  
Conference and claimed last season’s national championship in  
football, have attracted scores of sites, like Gator Sports Nation and  
Alligator Army, which trade in all manner of news and rumor related to  
the program.

Leagues and teams at many levels have tried to restrict how their  
games are covered while also creating their own thriving media  
divisions. That has already pitted them against traditional news media  
outlets, like newspapers and radio stations, for readers and listeners  
and advertising dollars. Now, they are trying to curtail rabid fans  
who run Web sites devoted to the teams they love — or hate.

The Southeastern Conference did not identify specific Web sites that  
might have prompted its policy changes. But mainstream media  
organizations and their defenders have joined bloggers in rushing to  
fight the new rules.

Sandra Baron, the executive director of the Media Law Resource Center,  
a nonprofit organization that focuses on First Amendment matters, said  
the rules were a “continuing effort to put a stranglehold on  
objective, third-party news organizations.”

Ethan Jaynes, writing on the Web site SECfootballblogger.com, said the  
SEC had been media friendly. But, he wrote, “now that Big Brother ESPN  
is in the picture everything has to be corporate and very ‘NFL’ish.”

The rules are part of an effort to protect a vast online video archive  
of games and file footage that the conference will market to fans this  
fall. The SEC Digital Network, as it will be known, is not unlike what  
Major League Baseball and other professional leagues have done with  
video from their games to create highlight reels, slide shows and  
other montages.

Conference officials said they were not trying to prevent fans from  
sending personal messages or brief descriptions of games to their  
Facebook pages or on Twitter, as some fans fear. Enforcing such a  
policy would be impractical and counterproductive because social media  
platforms help promote the conference’s teams, said Charles Bloom, a  
spokesman for the SEC. Last August, the conference signed 15-year  
television contracts with ESPN and CBS.

But “the line is drawn at game footage video,” Mr. Bloom said. “We  
want to protect our rights to have video between the conference and  
its members, and ban the commercial sale of photo images. Fans can  
post photos on their site or Facebook page, but they can’t be for sale.”

Mr. Bloom added that technology was becoming so sophisticated so  
quickly that the conference wanted to protect itself against new  
innovations in coming years.

The issue extends to the professional game. With the proliferation of  
new media forms, from Twitter to blogging to social networks, sports  
leagues and mainstream media outlets have been wrestling over access  
and ownership rights to images and transmissions of audio and video  
from stadiums.

The issue often becomes particularly contentious at the start of  
seasons, when leagues issue rules that journalists must follow if they  
want credentials to cover games.

“We’re dealing with this all the time,” said Lou Ferrara, the vice  
president and managing editor for sports, entertainment and  
interactive for The Associated Press. “It’s about access, and the  
ability to inform the public in an unbiased way.”

A few years ago, Major League Baseball sought to restrict the number  
of photographs that newspapers could use in slide shows on their Web  
sites. Pat Courtney, a spokesman for baseball, said the policy was not  
aimed at outlets reporting news, but at individuals who “take 600  
pictures of last night’s game” and put them on their Web sites.

The custom of leagues allowing local television stations to air a two- 
minute highlight video clip has not extended to the digital age.  
Newspapers, which were not in the business of transmitting video  
before the advent of the Internet, have sought the same rights as TV  
stations.

“It’s hard to say we should have free access to this if ESPN and Yahoo  
Sports have stepped up and paid for it,” said Jeff Price, the former  
president for digital businesses at Sports Illustrated, who is now a  
sports industry consultant. (ESPN and Yahoo pay Major League Baseball  
for the right to transmit highlight clips over the Internet.)

The dispute has reached high school sports. In Wisconsin, for example,  
Gannett, the newspaper chain that owns The Post-Crescent in Appleton,  
Wisc., has been enmeshed for months in a legal battle with the  
Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association.

The controversy touches on a number of issues, including the live  
streaming of games, the definition of live blogging and the ownership  
of photographs taken during games.

“They are challenging our authority to run our tournaments,” said Todd  
Clark, a spokesman for the athletic association.

Debate over in-game blogging has been particularly contentious in  
Wisconsin. Last year, the athletic association sent $100 invoices —  
the fee it charges radio stations to cover games — to newspapers that  
it determined were publishing play-by-play blogs. The newspapers  
ignored the bills.

“It was absolutely ludicrous,” said Peter Fox, the executive director  
of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. “You can’t do play-by-play in  
a blog. You can’t type that fast, for crying out loud.”

The SEC, the Big Ten and other collegiate conferences said they had  
not gone to court to shut down any media outlets that used their  
content without a license. But given how fast new technology has  
emerged, the number of media outlets wanting to broadcast professional  
and collegiate sports is likely to grow, along with efforts to police  
them.