Bringing in the Muscle
The big copyright news this week is the decision of Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against several sports and entertainment conglomerates that alleges that they have overstated their copyright claims to intellectual property published on the World Wide Web. This complaint brings corporate heavy hitters like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo into the IP match-up on the side of free culture. (Insert ironic pause here.) As this analysis from ars technica points out, one of the star players has been supercool Internet law professor Wendy Seltzer, who has been sparring with the NFL over her fair use rights to show their copyright statement in connection with educating her students and the public about intellectual property issues. Sivacracy has a good summary of the issues here.
As a sports fan myself, I think it will be interesting to see if MLB can keep videos of the record-breaking run off YouTube when Barry Bonds finally does it, although I'm certainly glad that he didn't when I was in the stands watching the Dodgers last night. But my main interest is in seeing more YouTube footage of another player that is constantly pulled for copyright reasons: last night's star hitter Nomar Garciaparra.
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