Sunday, May 31, 2009

MLB's Heavy Handed Media Policy

You can find just about anything on Youtube...Ryan Clark destroying Wes Welker, Fratellis music videos, the Numa Numa guy, Alex Ovechkin's amazing goal against the Coyotes, but you'll never see any MLB broadcast highlights because the league governs them with an iron fist.

I understand the need to enforce copyright infringement policies, but here's the stupid thing--I can't get that content anywhere else! I desperately want video of Ichiro's record-breaking 258th hit of the 2004 season. I used to be able to watch it on Youtube, but once MLB had it taken down, I had no recourse. You want to sell a DVD of it, fine. You want sell a video highlight online, fine. I'm willing to pay for it. But to take down the Youtube videos and not even offer it anywhere just engenders bad will. You'd think that now, when baseball is reeling under some of the worst publicity it's ever had to endure, that offering free highlights of some heartwarming moments would do them some good. But then again, baseball was never the forward-looking sport that...all the other sports are.

1 comment:

dg said...

On this subject, something that has always bothered me is that when we got to the NCAA Tournament, they are not allowed to show ANY replays on the jumbo-tron. When they start to show it, they are immediately covered by the large censoring NCAA logo. And everyone boos.

So there's some sick dunk or questionable foul call or Greg Oden just randomly pushes someone with two hands fully extended and there is no reply. Worse, there's a replay that starts and you think wait, this time i may actually see it!, followed by the all-censoring NCAA logo.

Rubbish!

ShareThis