The Premier League’s copyright lawyers are worried about the abundance of Vine videos of goals being shot at its games and are asking fans to stop recording and uploading highlights.
For die-hard football fans it’s been a long and arduous month since the end of the World Cup, but now with the Premier League beginning this weekend, fans and their mobile phones will be out in force to catch all the highs and lows as they happen.
However, according to the BBC, the league feels the traditional TV channels are seemingly paying billions for the rights of a product that is being distributed on Twitter in the form of goal highlights.
The ability to record short-form videos with the Vine app and upload them to social media is made even easier with the ability to pause and rewind live TV that is available on almost all digital services now but, evidently, they are still in breach of copyright laws.
Speaking to the BBC, the Premier League’s director of communications, Dan Johnson, has said that despite its warnings to people about breaking copyright law, they are looking into ways of preventing videos shot via Vine from being uploaded.
“It’s a breach of copyright and we would discourage fans from doing it. We’re developing technologies like gif crawlers, Vine crawlers, working with Twitter to look to curtail this kind of activity. I know it sounds as if we’re killjoys but we have to protect our intellectual property.”
In the UK, both The Sun and The Times newspapers have purchased the rights to show highlights online with subscribers having to pay. The Sun charges stg£7 per month for the privilege.
Camera at football ground image via Shutterstock
