http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061221-8474.html Clips of NBA fight disappear from YouTube 12/21/2006 11:13:30 AM, by Eric Bangeman Last Saturday night, the Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks engaged in a nasty fight near the end of a blowout win by the Nuggets at Madison Square Garden. Replays of the brawl, which resulted in a 15-game suspension for the NBA's leading scorer Carmelo Anthony, were plentiful on TV afterwards and quickly found their way onto YouTube. Just as quickly, the YouTube fight videos began disappearing. A search for the brawl on YouTube made just prior to publication yielded a handful of videos. Most of them, such as "Rumble in the Bronx," have vanished from the site and have been replaced with the following message: "This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner National Basketball Association because its content was used without permission." A couple of videos posted more recently are still up, but may not last much longer. The disappearance of the videos looks like a clumsy image repair attempt on the NBA's part. There are countless other clips from NBA games still up, along with user-created highlight reels set to hip-hop music, so it appears that unlike other pro sports leagues, the NBA isn't terribly concerned with copyright infringement when it comes to fan-generated content. Is it just damaging footage the NBA is bothered by? Could be, but there is still plenty of footage from another famous NBA donnybrook. A search for "Pacers Pistons" turns up plenty of footage from the notorious November 2004 melee involving players for the Indiana Pacers, Detroit Pistons, and some members of the crowd. The NBA is extremely image conscious. Before last season, the league issued a handful of new rules for players, including a dress code for players not suited up for games or attending league or team functions. While it's possible, albeit difficult, to exercise a degree of control over television and print media, the Internet is a different animal. Once something harmful or damaging is uploaded somewhere, it will be copied, mirrored, and cached. It is possible to make undesirable material more difficult to find, but eliminating it altogether is another matter entirely. That makes attempts at retroactive damage control over the Internet very problematic.
I will say this: it's copywritten video. Made by someone else, and it can't be legally reproduced on YouTube without permission. Letter of the law. I will also say this: it's stupid, yo.
who cares... the nba nor any other organisation can't stop anything on youtube - no-one can... as soon as one gets taken down, someone else will upload it again.
i agree 100%. legally it's only fair, but does the nba really think that by taking the video off of youtube, people will forget about it? bottom line is as an nba fan, i'm happy that they are doing all they can to clean up the sometimes unfair image of the league.
Its not about people trying to forget about it. If you're having a party and have people streaming in and out of your house, the police can come into the house w/out a warrant. Same thing with copyright ... if they let people walk all over their copyright w/out any repercussion's, then they can have some serious trouble upholding their copyright in a court of law.
Youtube has over 16,841 results for the "NBA" search. Many of these clips are over a year old. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nba&search=Search A search for "nba brawl" brings up 381 results. Many have been up there for several months. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nba+brawl&search=Search If you do a search for "nba brawl denver", there are only 3 clips from the Denver/NY brawl and they have been up only 3 days. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nba+brawl+denver The NBA is only worried about this recent brawl. If they were worried about copyright, they would have taken off the other clips, last year.
