By Winning the right to show top level English Football matches, only, the Red White And Blue pub in Portsmouth has won a hollow victory. They cannot use any logo, or image that is copyright. So how will it affect the football watching public? Going to a pub to watch a game in a sky signed up pub, nothing will change. Visit one where they have a non sky box, it will be difficult, no opening titles or commentary.
I tried to edit it but it still showed the original, it's difficult using an iPad with predictive text.
Are you saying that although pubs can now show games using non-Sky boxes, for some reason they won't be able to have commentary or display the company logos, etc?
but wont they still be using the sky pictures ? or am i missing something ... maybe its a feller streaming footage from an iphone !
But then the premier league logo will show up in numerous places around the ground during te game, so copyright owners will argue things like that, they'll never find a foolproof way of winning it forever.
LoL, all we'll have left is the grass, no players, no ground, and even then a black hole in the pitch too. Hah, no ball either!
The way I read the story was: A live broadcast of a real world event isn't copyrightable even if there's physical logos within the venue. To take it to an extreme, if someone wearing a Man U shirt went on a killing spree you don't have to go and ask Man U, the PL, Nike, and AIG for permission before you can broadcast footage of them. As a result any foreign broadcast of live PL games can be used in the UK. What can't be used is prerecorded footage, and I'm anticipating the real destroyer in the case will be a claim that instant replays are prerecorded footage, so the broadcast will have to be an uninterrupted live feed. Where the copyright does exist is in the use of the PL logo and club crests on graphics. So when Sky put the scoreline up and it's got the club crest next to each team's name that caption is copyright protected by the PL for the logo, and by Sky (and Electronic Arts) for the design of the caption. Sky (and ESPN for their games) own the rights to use those logos in the UK having bought them collectively from the PL. The result is that any foreign broadcast that also uses crests and logos in graphics can only be shown in the UK if the captions are removed, and if anyone is using a feed from Sky they need to take off all the graphics and replace them with their own. If the foreign broadcaster is using Sky's commentary then that is also copyrighted and belongs to Sky so they need to remove it as Sky will be selling them it for use within their own country and not the UK. If the foreign broadcaster is using their own commentary team then it's fine because they own the copyright to their own commentary. Equally there's nothing to stop pubs putting on a radio commentary of the game if they can find one that's in sync with the picture. NB: This doesn't mean any broadcaster (ie ITV) can just show it, it means that any EU broadcaster that has paid for the right to broadcast live in their own country has a right sell their broadcast in this country providing they're not adding copyrighted logos as part of the broadcast. You've also still got the time restrictions on when games can be broadcast in place, so all the Saturday 3pms are still illegal until a court decides otherwise.
