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.

Many British football clubs have their origins in communities that were for years divided by religion. In Glasgow, Celtic is the Catholic team and Rangers is the protestant team. In London, Tottenham Hotspur has traditional links to the Jewish community and for decades the fans have referred to themselves as the “Yid Army”.

Last week, eight schoolboys were arrested and questioned for ten hours by Hertfordshire police after singing a football chant at a Jewish teacher’s leaving do. Tottenham Hotspur Football Club is already in consultation with an array of busybodies over concerns that fans might be being racist towards themselves.

Fans and club historians point out that the use of the words “Yiddo” and “Yid Army” by the fans to refer to themselves has developed over decades and stopped some of the real racial abuse that used to occur at football matches.

Spiked editor Brendan O’Neill has coined the phrase “mate speech” to describe this new assault on free speech.

if recent cases in Britain are anything to go by, the language police are turning their attentions to what we might call ‘Mate Speech’. They’re cracking down on banter between buddies, throwaway chants at football matches, and words uttered in informal, behind-the-scenes settings, on the basis that someone somewhere, if they ever caught drift of these words, might possibly be offended by them.

Welcome to the humourless society, where no off-the-cuff remark, gag or utterance is beyond the sanction of the sanctimonious word-watchers.

UPDATE: More from Spiked on the ‘Yid Army’, including this sporting-rivalry gem:

Chants at sports stadiums should not be interpreted literally. An obvious case in point are the basketball games between Hapoel Jerusalem and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel, where a common chant from the Jerusalem supporters is ‘Ya Saddam ya habib udrub udrub Tel Aviv’. Hapoel fans adopted it after news programmes showed Palestinians chanting it on rooftops during the Gulf War. It means ‘Saddam, darling, bomb Tel Aviv’ in Arabic.

China has lifted a series of restrictions on the media in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. As part of its bid the Chinese government promised the International Olympic Committee that it would allow free reporting before and during the Games. The reporting restrictions have been suspended for the period 1 January 2007 to 17 October 2008.

Currently reporters are not allowed to travel freely and are not allowed to interview people without official permission. Those rules are now gone. The biggest concern is how the rules are enforced, given China’s secretive official culture. Christian Science Monitor reports

The strength of that culture is clearly evident in an official police language-training manual obtained by the Monitor. It is being used to teach Beijing policemen the English phrases they might need when dealing with Olympic visitors.

Published by China’s Public Security Bureau University and the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, “Olympic Security English” contains a practice dialog entitled, “How to Stop Illegal News Coverage”.

The dialog teaches policemen the English phrases they would need to detain a foreign reporter found talking to a Chinese citizen about Falun Gong, an outlawed spiritual movement.

Beijing city patrolmen are given the manual as part of a home study program according to one city police officer who asked not to be identified. They are taught how to say, “You’re a sports reporter. You should only cover the Games,” and to tell the reporter that Falun Gong is “beyond the permit” and “beyond the limit of your coverage and illegal.”

How effective these changes are remains to be seen but let’s hope that under the world’s gaze Chinese society is prized a little more open and that with the genie out of the bottle that openness lasts long after the closing ceremony.

In New Zealand rugby is the national religion - it certainly has a far wider following than Christianity - but we still have laws that hark back to the days when Christianity operated in cosy collusion with the government.

TV3 is looking for an exemption to s81 of the Broadcasting Act, which forbids the broadcast of advertisements from 6am to noon on Sunday mornings. Sunday mornings are generally the low-rent end of television, so the gagging of advertisers to protect Christian sensibilities goes unnoticed, but that won’t be the case during next year’s rugby World Cup. Five potential All Black games, including a semifinal and final would fall during restricted hours.

Canwest, who presumably paid a fair bundle for the broadcasting rights to the tournament, have petitioned Broadcasting Minister Steve Maharey for an exemption to these archaic regulations. Maharey has delegated the decision to Sports Minister Trevor Mallard.

The real question should not be about just the World Cup but about what right the government has to dictate when broadcasters are allowed to broadcast advertising. Clearly this should be at their own discretion. Advertisers have the right to express themselves and broadcasters have the right to provide them with the means.

The Broadcasting Act bans television advertising on Sunday and Anzac Day mornings and all day on Christmas Day, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. Gagging advertisers to protect religious sensibilities has no place in a free country.