Louisville Courier-Journal v. NCAA

This is fascinating. I almost always take the First Amendment's side, and I do again in this case.

But let me just throw something out there.

Personally, I don't see what you get from reading a live blog generated from the press box. Sportswriter Smenkman just passed gas? Sportswriter Chuckles just hit the buffet again? Who cares what's going on inside a press box? So you get the beat writer's opinion on the game. Whoop-te-do. Opinions are a dime a dozen.

But let's talk about live blogging from courtside at a basketball game or from the sidelines at a football game.

Ever sat behind or near a bench during a basketball game? You see and hear the most amazing things. Let's say you're blogging what the coach says. (A)-- Somebody from the other team could be monitoring the blog, which could potentially impact the game, and (B)-- Would that constitute an infringement of a paid-for "broadcast" right?

 

Tuesday's Courier-Journal story is at:

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070612/SPORTS/706120464/1002

 

Granted, the scene inside a press box isn't very exciting. BUt you can get some good inside info that you can pass along to the fans. And at a place like a college baseball stadium, you're right there on top of the fans. So you don't have to say what the other writers are doing.

Basketball wuld be way more exciting, but that isn't the issue here.

 

"As The Courier-Journal’s attorney, Jon Fleischaker, told Rick Bozich for a story in tomorrow’s newspaper: “It’s a real question that we’re being deprived our right to report within the first amendment from a public facility. Once a player hits a home run, that’s a fact. It’s on TV, everybody sees it. They (the NCAA) can’t copyright that fact. The blog wasn’t a simulcast or a recreation of the game. It was an analysis"


plain as day - you can't copyright a fact.
next time the Plagiarism Police start moralizing, keep that in mind.
ron borges wrote generic facts that somebody else wrote first.
but still generic facts.
nobody owns them.
you can't steal what nobody owns.

 

Its amazing the comments to the CJ Story today. People dont give a shit, it seems. They blame the newspaper.

Now...I guess if the CJ didnt report the facts from a State Senate committee meeting that raised taxes in the commonwealth 35 percent, because they were barred from this meeting and "recreating and replaying the facts"; they'd get eaten alive by the public for not fighting it.

This proves the majority of the public is in fact dumber than I once believed.

 

I have pretty high standards, so the American public has not yet reached the depths of dumbness that I expect of it.
It's not, however, for a lack of effort.

 

Do yourself a favor, never read the comments on C-J.com. It's the Algonquin Round Table of Internet comment boards. That is if the Algonquin Round Table consisted of solely Larry the Cable Guy fans.

 

The problem with this, too, is that the public only cares about what they see on ESPN. Everything ESPN does is like the word of God; they bring the events into the people's living rooms, bars, den, etc. The sad thing is, I think that if journalists were to all of a sudden stop covering all of these events and just left the games to ESPN, nobody would mind. They're still seeing it, so why do they care what we have to do?

In my limited experience, it seems that people think it's cool to be a reporter for the access that we get to the press box, clubhouses, etc. But once that novelty wears off that we get to "hang out with the players," we, for some reason, become the enemy. And because we're the enemy, nobody will ever care to side with us for what we're fighting, because we're useless in their minds. As long as they have ESPN, they get to see the game, they're happy.

I would really, really like to see what would happen should people open a newspaper one day and the sports pages are just blank because of the lack of access. Perhaps only then would people understand our side.

 

Anyone remember the episode of "Lou Grant" where they left a block of white space on the metro section front and inserted a note that it was the space that would have been used for coverage of the city council meeting had their reporter not been barred?

God dang it, Lou Grany and Mrs. Pynshon had balls in those days.

 

She was a good publisher, but she treated her kids like crap.

 

I wanted to say "nicely done." On second thought, though, fahgettaboutit.

 

I live blog on occasion and you'd be surprised how many fans read it. I know I was.