The EPL has warned fans "not to post unofficial videos of goals online after thousands of goals were shared during the World Cup," according to Mark Tran of the London GUARDIAN. Through Vine, a "popular video sharing service owned by Twitter, fans can upload unofficial clips of football action in an instant." The Premier League, however, has said that it will "clamp down on the unofficial videos when the football season starts on Saturday." EPL Communications Dir Dan Johnson said that posting goal vines "was illegal, as was sharing the videos on websites such as Twitter, and amounted to breaking copyright laws" (GUARDIAN, 8/15). MARKETING MAGAZINE's Shona Ghosh wrote a "quick search for Premier League footage on Vine brings up hundreds of accounts, many of which have thousands of followers." One account featuring goal clips, Best of Sports, has "almost 30,000 followers." The account states "I don't own any of these clips," suggesting that "at least some users are well aware of the copyright issues." Johnson: "You can understand that fans see something, they can capture it, they can share it, but ultimately it is against the law. 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" (MARKETING MAGAZINE, 8/15). In London, Jack De Menezes reported Johnson added, "I know it sounds as if we're killjoys but we have to protect our intellectual property." The announcement comes following the "latest TV broadcasting deal to be agreed by Sky Sports and BT Sport." On top of that, newspapers The London Times and The Sun have
agreed deals to "show online goals and highlights, and the introduction
of Vines means that people who have not subscribed to their paper can
still see the action for free." The development in TV detail has "also helped Vines take off with viewers
able to pause and record live TV, meaning they can rewind matches
should something of interest happen, record it, and upload the footage
to the internet for all to see." Royalty auditing business 360 Audit Managing Partner Henna Riaz, an IP lawyer, explained why the Premier League is "taking such measures." Riaz: "It is being forced to tackle the issue head on and in a very public manner to demonstrate to its commercial partners that the issue is being taken extremely seriously. I would imagine that the Premier League has had some stressful conversations with its commercial partners about the unauthorized use of this copyright" (INDEPENDENT, 8/15).
