Footie on YouTube

The latest company looking at copyright violations on YouTube seems to be the FA. Unsurprisingly, along with any music video of any note, most of the key goals from around the world and other football incidents (Defoe’s arm chewing for example), quickly find their way onto YouTube.
All this is copyright of course, with Sky and the BBC paying lots of money for the rights in the UK. But a 1 minute goals roundup of a match is perfectly suited to the internet, and those videos are going to end up somewhere.
What’s strange about the story is that the FA is going after a blog rather than YouTube for hosting the goals.
Anyway, it’s really working, because the site links to many of the goals of significance from this weekend including Arsenal’s demolition of Reading, and Real Madrid’s defeat of Barcelona. None of the Saturday games are up, and no doubt by the time you read this, the Premier League goals with have been taken down.
So what happens next? Does the FA sue YouTube? Or do they strike some deal with Google to allow goals to be played and get a stake in Google as a consequence like the record companies? I suspect that neither will be the case.
Of course, if they were really smart, they’d look at the example of Major League Baseball. The World Series is underway at the moment, and they let you watch a “fastcast” which is a short, neatly produced free video package. The highlights of last night’s game – in which the Detroit Tigers tied the series up at 1-1 against the St Louis Cardinals – are already online. But if you want, there’s a competitively priced package of full game streams available to buy. Sadly, while there is video on thefa.com, there’s no Premier League action, relatively little England footage, and even the U21 stuff is out of date (no Germany v England from the other week – just the first leg).
Surely the best way of combatting pirates and video sites is to make something even more compelling available for consumers? That’s certainly what happened with music and the like of the iTunes music store.


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