Fuck the NFL

[ChrisCantSkate]

they are all a bunch of rules that arnt enforced on the mirco level. they are trying, at least im assuming, to keep people from starting their own company to cover the games. if they are public property(no copyright restrictions on it) then i could take those games, rebroadcast them, sell advertisment for it, run my own sportscenter type program and do everything espn pays to be able to do, but for free. they arnt after the guys standing around the watercooler talking about last nights game, but if you openly allow that which im not even sure applys to them, but for the sake of your argument i wont question it, then you open loopholes for other things to happen. its just stopping a problem before it starts, or hell, maybe correcting one from a while back, i dont know

[GT40FIED]

Well...ok, forget economics for a second. Think about ethics. Sure, without those laws people could rebroadcast games and advertise and do Sportscenter-type shows, but who is that really hurting? The NFL has already made it's money at that point. They've already gotten paid for advertising (long before any game ever airs) and they're certainly not making money off of the broadcast itself since they do most of them on network television (who has already paid them a small fortune for the rights to do so). So if anyone has a right to complain it'd be the networks, no? I mean, they're paying out the ass for the NFL's "property" and if someone can come along and do it for less or free then they get screwed, not the NFL. And really, how can the NFL possibly call a game "property". They can own rights to it's broadcast, but the second after opening kick off they have no say in what happens which sort of voids any intellectual copyright laws. Since that's pretty much what they're standing on, how do they get away with such bullshit?