A handful of sports leagues and media companies are trying to intimidate the public when issuing inaccurate warnings about making "unauthorized" copies of their work, according to a complaint expected to be filed with the Federal Trade Commission.
The complaint, expected to be submitted Wednesday by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), a trade group that represents such tech giants as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo, names the National Football League, Major League Baseball, NBC-Universal, Morgan Creek Productions, DreamWorks, Harcourt and Penguin.
An example of what CCIA is referring to is the little speech TV or radio announcers make during breaks in games. Most sports fans can recite at least a smidgen of the boilerplate.
"Any rebroadcast, reproduction or other use of the pictures and accounts of this game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is prohibited," is the MLB's copyright warning.
While the statements have become a tradition during professional football and baseball broadcasts, the CCIA claims such statements are false and are harmful to consumers and technology companies. Similar warnings can be found in books, CDs and DVDS, according to the CCIA.
"These warnings intimidate average people and hinder free expression," the CCIA in a statement. "They depict as illegal many legitimate and beneficial uses made possible by the high-tech industry, and cast a pall over the high-tech marketplace...These ubiquitous statements often include gross misrepresentations of federal law and characterize as unlawful acts that are explicitly permitted by law."
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