Premier League to crack down on Vine goal videos

With the World Cup only taking place every four years, the way people interact over it and share related content changes quite dramatically each time as technology evolves. This time around, it was Vine that caused a lot of controversy – at least among Premier League Executives – as when combined with DVR rewind features, it meant everyone could make a short video of the build up and aftermath of every goal. But according to the Premier League, this type of practice is entirely illegal and has warned people not to do it.

Speaking with BBC Newsbeat, Dan Johnson, director of communication at the Premier League said that most people creating Vines or short videos of Premier League matches, don't realise that they're breaking copyright law. Tweeting a link out to others is even worse he said.

“You can understand that fans see something, they can capture it, they can share it, but ultimately it is against the law”, he said.

Yea, good luck with stopping it guys

If there's one thing we've learned in the past few years however, it's that it's nigh on impossible to get something taken down from the internet once it's out there, but the Premier League is going to have a good go anyway.

“We're developing technologies like gif crawlers, Vine crawlers, working with Twitter to look to curtail this kind of activity,” continued Johnson. He added the caveat that he knows this makes the organisation “sound like killjoys,” but claimed protecting its intellectual property was more important.

Clearly, the Premier League isn't happy with people seeing games for free, because it makes an absolute killing selling licensing rights. Sky and BT Sport paid £3 billion between them for just three seasons of games, while The Sun and The Time also paid large sums for the online rights.

But there's a reason people watch these Vine videos: because they're often faster than the legitimate sources and are of course, far cheaper. Getting every Sky and BT sports channel in order to watch every game would cost you a fortune in monthly subscriptions. Even just signing up to The Sun's scheme will set you back £7 a month.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: I can understand the Premier League wanting to continue to make its money in the traditional way, but it's clearly going about this the wrong way. Scrubbing feeds with automated takedown or reporting tools is going to create a fiasco like Youtube's Content ID system in no time. 

Become a Patron!