21 April 2008
Who owns sports content?
Posted by admin under: Biz Dev; Blogging .
The New York Times has a interesting piece on sports organizations and the media who cover them. Increasingly, the once allies are now competitors, as sports organizations are jumping into new media and enforcing restrictions on the type of content others can turn around and monetize. Newspapers are getting squeezed the most and with what seemingly appears to be a doomsday clock for the end of print media, they’re going down fighting.
“As the leagues have become more assertive and more aggressive, the sense on the media side is that we need to get more organized,” said Dave Tomlin, associate general counsel for The Associated Press.
For example, the Media Law Resource Center, a group whose members include most major media organizations, has commissioned legal research in anticipation of the question of media restrictions going to the courts. One tactic being considered is to challenge M.L.B.’s antitrust exemption.
“My view is that this is news gathering, and I look for legal responses to any effort to clamp down on news gathering,” said Sandra Baron, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center. “What I see is a strident effort by a powerful monopoly to control information. They have a monopoly on the game. Now they want to have a monopoly on the information.”
