Last night, a trim, ageless-looking Bernard Hopkins (nearly 52 years old) went seven very competitive rounds with Joe Smith Jr (25 years younger). Many thought he was ahead or even, when he found himself up against the ropes and, crouching to avoid punches, through the ropes.
Yes, Smith, the white boxer from New York landed several clean shots. He also landed a questionable final one while Hopkins was halfway through the ropes. You do NOT hit a boxer when he's technically "out of bounds."
The fight could've ended in a disqualification (you do NOT hit somebody "out of bounds") but with Hopkins bitching about his ankle somehow hurting (he actually landed on his shoulders and head), he was counted out for not returning to the ring within 20 seconds.
Almost instantly, people were posting the highlights on TWITTER.
Didn't pay to see the fight? Never pay for premium channels like HBO or Box Nation? No problem!!
Almost instantly, all the website newspapers ran the story. Since almost NONE of them have boxing reporters anymore, they used or re-wrote the Associated Press feed. Or...they simply quoted the result and let TWITTER users, with their STOLEN CLIPS...give the story.
Here's the page from the New York Post, owned by that master of fair play, Rupert Murdoch:
Yes, like dozens upon dozens of other well-known newspaper sites, it was considered, uh, "fair use" to grab stuff off TWITTER, even if it was un-fair use clips from HBO.
What's HBO gonna do about it? Start sending takedown emails at midnight? And who would be on duty? Thanks to flabby Internet law, websites such as TWITTER, GOOGLE and EBAY can do as they please, and merely answer a takedown request in a "reasonable" amount of time.
Chuckles Schumer, where are you? And what happened to Patsy Leahy and his push for copyright protection and Internet sanity?
The Internet is also the Land of 1000 typos, so when some "Decider" or "Gawker" or Huffy-Puffington re-writes the news, don't expect spell-check to help. "Manner," NY POST, not "manor."
But hey, we've got Donald Trump, who spells "unprecedented" as "unpresidented." (PS, my spell check tried to correct my deliberate spelling error! PPS, there's still a glimmer of hope that with the Russian hacking and the twisted Electoral College system, Trump could actually be UN-presidented. How about giving America a month to get the polling booths back and give it another try?)
The interesting twist here is that actual news broadcasts on TV have none of this weird wiggle-room. They are simply prohibited from using clips without permission. PERIOD.
Whether it's the Olympics or a pay-per-view sports event, the sports broadcasters on local news or cable news networks can hardly do more than describe what took place, and MAYBE offer a still photo. No, a TV broadcaster can't say, "Oh, and here's somebody on TWITTER posting an illegal clip of the fight. Let's all look!"
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