Section 14

Technology continues to knock traditional ways of doing things out of the park. CricInfo 3D provides animations of cricket matches to viewers across the world. CricInfo sends out a tiny file to each of its viewers describing where the ball was bowled, what shot was played, where the ball ended up, and the like. The client software then visually renders the shot.

Sky Television, which has exclusive broadcast rights for the Cricket World Cup, claims that CricInfo is breaching their copyright.

Wisden, owner of CricInfo, rubbishes the claims saying that its data files are based on public domain information gathered by its staff.

It’s hard to see how Sky’s claim stacks up. While it has a legitimate interest in protecting its intellectual property, it’s outrageous to claim that it should be illegal to report - in your own words, or the technological equivalent - the results of a sports game.

Sky’s interest should be limited to the materials it has created, the broadcast video and commentary. The purpose of copyright is protect the value that the author has created in his own property, not to prevent others from creating other valuable products, and CricInfo should be applauded for their ingenuity.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 9:36 am and is filed under Internet, Sport, Copyright. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.