No Social Media In These College Stadiums 265
RawJoe writes "Today, the Southeastern Conference (SEC) is expected to release a final version of its new media policy that, at the moment, can best be described as a ban on all social media usage at SEC games. Earlier this month, the conference informed its schools of the new policy, which says that ticketed fans can't 'produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or disseminating) any material or information about the Event, including, but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the Event.' Translated, that means no Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, TwitPic, or any other service that could in any way compete with authorized media coverage of the event. In the case of the SEC, authorized media coverage rights belong to CBS, who has a $3B deal with the conference over the next 15 years, according to The St Petersburg Times." Good luck with that. To quote Clay Shirky, "The idea that people can't capture their own lived experience is a losing proposition."
Or Whatever the SEC version is. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
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I mention this all the time I hear the disclaimer that I'm not legally allowed to disseminate any accounting of the game.
So fans can't discuss games? Is the NFL going to sue bloggers?
Re:Or Whatever the SEC version is. . . (Score:5, Funny)
Dude! I'm in Baton Rouge at the [removed by SEC] game. You should have seen that awesome hit that [removed by SEC] just laid on the quarterback for [removed by SEC]. He forced a [removed by SEC] and ran it in for a [removed by SEC] bringing the score to [removed by SEC] to [removed by SEC]. It was AWESOME!
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Actually - it appears they say that "ticketted fans" cannot Tweet.
So if you have a ticket and hate football, or don't have a ticket and are a fan then you can still tweet :-)
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Re:Or Whatever the SEC version is. . . (Score:5, Funny)
Football. Seriously, football talk on /.?
I'm confused and scared all at once.
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And American football at that
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Can a hearing aid rebroadcast it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, from the surrounding ambient noise to the wearers ear?
As long as everybody Twitters, it'll be OK (Score:5, Interesting)
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You could even go so far as to say you watched the game as a replay on TV and am commenting on that, not the same game you watched live.
The whole idea is stupid.
Re:As long as everybody Twitters, it'll be OK (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah well maybe everyone should participate in a flash crowd and dress up as birds in the stands and then tweet away about tweeting.
wrong (Score:2)
1) pick your political persuasion (often determines number 2)
2) pick your (in your opinion) reasonable activity
3) do it in a jurisdiction that doesn't agree that it is reasonable
4) be a criminal!
The world would be better off with fewer asshats, and the asshats are often not who you have been told they are.
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Of course, those SEC fans might do what many music fans did...stop buying tickets.
"in news today, SEC have stepped up their lawsuits against tweeting fans, having seen profits fall massively, clearly caused by fans getting all the information about the game through 140 character messages, and therefore no longer needing to watch it in real life"
Times like this (Score:2)
Re:Times like this (Score:5, Insightful)
It's times like this I wished I watched sports so I could boycott them. Oh well, guess I will continue not caring.
Be careful mate.
"First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didnâ(TM)t speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."
Pastor Martin Niemoller (1892-1984)
Re:Times like this (Score:4, Funny)
The sensible answer is a protest (Score:5, Interesting)
Using Twitter and Facebook when you're at a game is distracting at best, narcissistic at worst. However, the assumption that they are using to fuel their ban - that personal accounts and expressions are somehow not admissible, that CBS has a monopoly on communication - is dangerous, and should be protested. You can laugh it off and say, "There's no way that this is Constitutional," but you should stand up for your rights. As lame as it may sound, they should organize a huge Twitter contingent to post at the same time, and see if they can get kicked out. That would show people how out of touch the SEC is, and that people's rights cannot be signed away, with OR without their consent.
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Since people are generally stupid enough to not care until someone is sued, my prediction is that you will see no ban/contempt or consideration of protesting in any way. I think the best protest would be that no one go to the games until the agreement changes, but no - that wont happen either.
Stupid rules should lose them BIG money.
People are no longer political minded enough to care. The voting polls are an indication of that.
I can assure you that I wont go to any event unless I happen to get free tickets;
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Twitter contingent? You mean, getting a lot of people to pay to get access to an event to protest the event's rules? Are you sure you thought that one through? Vote with your dollars. Why not just avoid the event completely?
Re:The sensible answer is a protest (Score:5, Insightful)
Because intentionally violating the unjust rule is forcing their hand into enforcing it, thus revealing it to be unjust. I'd liken it to "colored" protesters back in the 60's who sat in the "whites only" sections fully intending to be arrested or to mothers who congregate and all breastfeed their babies together at a restaurant that bans breastfeeding everywhere except in the restroom stalls. (Would you want to eat your meal on some of those toilets?) Let's see the stadiums eject 100 fans per game for tweeting and see what kind of press coverage they get.
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Because of course the SEC (a sports conference of American Universities, many of them public) couldn't possibly have games in private stadiums that were largely subsidized by public money and university stadiums that were almost certainly paid for with public money.
Yep, another clear case of we the public unfairly demanding our fair due.
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Protesting against rules that a private business sets for behavior on their own property is a ridiculous idea.
Luckily, the Civil Rights Movement disagreed with you. The sit-ins were protesting against segregation imposed as private rules by private businesses, and now, laws prevent private businesses from setting unjust rules on their own property. You don't have the right to set down just any conditions you want on the use of your property, and rightly so; allowing property owners to use their ownership to promote injustice, is not just.
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Protesting against rules that a private business sets for behavior on their own property is a ridiculous idea.
Except in this case, 11 out of the 12 Universities belonging to the SEC are public schools, and only one is private.
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So, one could go to this SEC, whatever it is, and protest that there isn't (if that's the case) a law that bans the banning of twitter at this private property.
Would that work for you?
Re:The sensible answer is a protest (Score:5, Insightful)
Take some time to think through what you just wrote.
Don't mix breastfeeding tinto this debate. (Score:3, Insightful)
That has nothing to do with feminism.
Breastfeeding is a natural thing, there is nothing feminist about wanting to do it in public when needed.
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Why wouldn't it be? If a restaurant kicks a woman out for feeding her child, why can't ten women protest the restaurant's actions by going there and breastfeeding their children? Taking this back to the civil rights movement, it would have been ok for one person to sit in the "whites only" section when they "weren't allowed" but not for a group of people to do so? So long as the group doesn't turn violent, I see nothing against a group organizing such an activity to shine a light on an unjust practice.
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A quick web search revelas this handy URL: http://definitions.uslegal.com/p/public-place/ [uslegal.com]
What if the ticket forms a contract? (Score:2)
What if all persons who bought tickets had to sign an agreement to such an effect, with the consideration that they are then able to see the game, and if they refuse, they are given a full refund?
Would that not form a binding contract?
They cannot control people doing things outside the stadium, but it's largely accepted practice that if you're in my home, you obey my rules. Same with any business place.
Seriously? 15 years? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who knows what kind of tech we will get in those 15 years? It's going to be very difficult to control that over the long term.
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Please try harder. The SEC preserved their digital rights in those deals.
Re:Seriously? 15 years? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, the seller sure got bamboozled!
Yeah, the buyer sure got bamboozled!
Uh, I mean... everybody sure is an idiot!
Who even cares (Score:5, Insightful)
That's nice. I'm releasing a new policy that anyone who says my name 3 times has to send me a $100 check.
So what if they release a policy? It's not like they have any sort of legal standing to enforce it. What are they going to do, stop selling you tickets?
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This is the SEC. They don't need legal standing. For most season ticket holders, losing their spot as a contributor/ticket holder would be far worse than spending a little time in jail and/or paying some sort of fine.
Physical enforcement is easy (Score:2)
Re:Physical enforcement is easy (Score:5, Funny)
I text "x just won!" A red light comes on in an operations room at the NSA. The operator verifies that it's illegal information. He looks up my cell number in a police database and forwards my name and number to the SEC quick response team. They search their ticket order database for credit card payment information corresponding to my name. There are 2 Brian Gordons at the game, so a technician dashes down to the video surveillance command. He hunches over an open workstation at the back of the room and calls up seating plans for the stadium and the camera coverage layout. He brings up a still frame from the correct camera. He can't tell exactly what he's looking at so he opens a 3D model of the stadium, counts off the seats to find my seat number, and zooms out toward the camera's position. He switches between the still frame window and the 3D model window until they match up perfectly. He registers a video stream from the video processing cluster since it hasn't been offloaded to storage yet. He connects to the stream, seeing a live feed from that camera. He sshes into the cluster and with a few quick commands to the stream server navigates to the exact time of the text. He zooms in, but my seat is too far from the camera to get a clear image. He has an idea- he'll try to see if the TV cameras passed over that section. He sshes into the producer's control workstation and downloads the XML cache of the camera location control software. The archive was never closed for writing so it's corrupt but WinRAR extracts most of the control commands. He filtered out every command except those 10 seconds around the call. There were about 100 files. He opened them all, and went through one by one. 11 files in, he finds a camera whose origin position and origin angle look down on E section. The HD stream hasn't been encoded for storage yet so he dumps the raw data for that camera, for that 1-minute interval around the call. At around 70MB per frame, it takes a few minutes to become available on the stream server. He streams it, manually seeks until it swings into the proper angle, and zooms in tightly on my seat. Sure enough, I'm texting. So it's definitely that Brian Gordon. He dashes back up to the quick response center and quickly opens a security ticket, assigning the E section attendants and marking it Immediate Alert so it will send them a text. They get the alert, containing my seat number. They spot me.
"Excuse me sir, please come with us."
Hmmm... seems to take some time... (Score:2)
I text "x just won!" A red light comes on in an operations room at the NSA. ~SNIP~ (a lot of time consuming stuff) ~SNIP~ They get the alert, containing my seat number. They rush to the seat not only to find it empty but the entire stadium empty because "x just won!" and the game is over so everyone has gone home.
"Hmmmm. Maybe we haven't thought our cunning plan entirely through. :-/ "
T, FTFY. ;)
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So what if they release a policy? It's not like they have any sort of legal standing to enforce it. What are they going to do, stop selling you tickets?
You're in their* stadium.
They have all the legal standing they need to wield the banhammer and blacklist you.
The SEC doesn't have to actively police tens of thousands of people per game.
All they have to do is make an example of a few high profile individuals.
*It's not really theirs, but their rules apply, which works out to be the same thing.
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Many of the stadiums and schools where this "policy" would naturally be enforced are on publicly funded campuses. This isn't quite the old "private entity - their rules" we so see often confused on the internet.
I'm not saying which way it would end up, but I would imagine that could put a twist on it.
Maybe you should consider two things.... (Score:2)
1) Given that the corporate entity *agreed* to abide by the Regulation of The People in exchange for permission to incorporate, then what The People say, goes. e.g.: Health Department Inspections; Fire Department Inspections.
2) Further, there is *law* which regulates things like this... In NYS, it's section 40-B of the Civil Rights Law, which pretty much states that if you have a ticket, and aren't committing a breach of the peace or being offensive, then they *under law* cannot throw you out.
Of course
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I wouldn't go anywhere in public without my phone. Certainly not into a teeming mass of thousands of people. It's just an obvious safety precaution.
Higher Education (Score:3, Interesting)
Since schools are disseminators of knowledge, this policy to ban knowledge/information attacks the entire institution of education. What network TV has to do with the educational process beyond Cable In The Classroom is beyond understanding. Clearly these policies will need to change or colleges will no longer be an effective means of higher education.
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The idea that Twitter is even remotely related to 'higher education' just seems, well, bat shit insane.
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Men running around a field doesn't have anything to do with education anyway.
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And this is useful knowledge because?
How about if the defense is a gram negative(*) - which attack vector do you use? At least this information can be used to save lives.
(*) Gram negative is a type of bacteria.
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Clearly these policies will need to change or colleges will no longer be an effective means of higher education.
I see a problem here, you used the future tense. That implies that colleges are currently an effective means of higher education. This is certainly subject to debate.
Trying to police this... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a longtime Gator I'm trying to imagine what kind of hell trying to police this will be. And that is from the prospective of being a Gator being that UF is pretty damn uptight when it comes to how they expect us to act at our home sporting events. Never freaking mind what happens at Ol'Miss or UT games.
Yeah, good luck with that SEC.
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Sill Gator fan. They aren't interested in actually executing a real ban. They just want to have the full and proper authority to kick you out of the stadium for doing any sort of information transmission that could potentially harm their revenue stream.
Re:Trying to police this... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know, I know, this was SEC, but how long before some of the others pick this up? Real sure I took a picture last time I was at the FSU / UF game in Tallahassee - while in uniform and on duty - are they going to eject me as well?
I think an earlier poster hit the nail on the head - it isn't so much so they will enforce it, just they will have the opportunity to enforce it if they so desire (selectively probably).....
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This is why us big ten folk are rarely the problem, and rareley become it.. OSU sucks, but that's there problem
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As an alumni, probably not much, but any student that gets caught with a facebook photo taken in the stadium: immediate suspension.
Or they'll give the poor student an option of paying a "Reduced fine" ($2-5k) and everything will be taken care of out of court. Everything done RIAA style against students that can't afford a lawyer to fight this.
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Another long time Gator fan here. I believe what's driving this decision is that the SEC held on to their digital rights from the big multi-billion dollar deals with ESPN and CBS. Not only are they currently trying to ban twitter, facebook, et al., they are also "prohibiting" digital broadcasts of the games, since they are starting the SEC Digital Network.
Although I dislike this decision, it's pretty much par for course with Major League Baseball and the NBA, correct?
Go Gators
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They won't have to police it at our stadium. Drop an extra 70k people in town and you can barely make a cell call for a mile around the stadium, much less get net access inside of it.
There's not much need to spend effort enforcing something that's practically impossible anyway.
Suck it out (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Suck it out (Score:4, Insightful)
Its more likely that the Pope will declare that God doesn't exist than that US Colleges will stop caring about sports and start caring about education again.
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Without evil college sports, and all the money they bring to schools, schools could teach better! Yeah. Teaching better with less money. Right.
Admittedly, going to UF with a phenominally successful sports program over the last few years and a great history, we might be the exception that sport pours money into the school (and, hell, the local economy). However, even if not? Fuck that. Sure, college sports being huge isn't all good, but if the enti
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Morons (Score:3, Interesting)
I WAS an SEC football fan. I'm not whether I'm allowed to be now. Can I not discuss the game with friends the next day now? Fuck that.
Hmm... (Score:2)
Only if you don't have a bottomless supply of other people's money, and a dash of state power, to enforce the ban. Dirty hippie.
How many lawsuits are they willing to file? (Score:2)
When the first SEC game is held, and 10,000 people all tweet (or post to Facebook, etc,) from their cell phone "Take that, SEC!", what will they do?
Not to mention, people who use pseudonyms. Will they actually take the time to track down people who are posting two pictures to TwitPic?
I can *MAYBE* understand them saying "no competing with our contracted partner", aka no having a running play-by-play via Twitter, with fifty+ accompanying pictures (think what lots of blogs do for Apple Keynote events...) Bu
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When the first SEC game is held, and 10,000 people all tweet (or post to Facebook, etc,) from their cell phone "Take that, SEC!", what will they do?
Nothing, because that doesn't violate the rules. If they described the game, that would be a different matter.
The SEC doesn't get Viral Advertising (Score:3, Interesting)
War Eagle to all, and I can't believe but totally understand the short-sightedness of this.
The SEC became the best conference in college football because fans are rabid. They live, eat, breath this stuff year round. They talk about it year round. Trying to control pics/video/texts from a SEC game is impossible from a practical standpoint and stupid from a marketing standpoint. You want more people talking about your sport, openly, and while there. That increases your brand penetration and desirablity.
Silence (Score:2)
I suppose that would include turning to the person sitting next to you and commenting on the game. Or even cheering in response. In fact, I would expect a stadium filled with people studiously following these restrictions to be utterly silent. Aren't sporting events fun? Don't answer that.
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I believe what you describe is a Notre Dame home game.
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And the obligatory link [everydaysh...turday.com]
Court-ready proof that this can't work: (Score:5, Insightful)
There is another social medium, without which the whole event's existence can't even be proven: Good old fashioned direct human-to-human communication.
In other words: Does this contract rule (as opposed to a law) forbid people to memorize it and then tell it to other people (e.g. by talking to someone later)?
How would they expect to enforce or even check this? They can't control it. They would have to delete the memory inside the brain every time someone steps outside.
So if people can tell someone, then that other person can put in on a social medium site, because he/she never had a contract or anything with the SEC.
Which makes the rule pointless and by definition ineffective.
They have to face the fact, that the time of exclusive "big media" broadcast rights is over. Besides: Who watches it on "big media" anyway nowadays? I have no TV for nearly a decade now, and many friends of mine don't have one either. Or they only switch it on, to zap for some time, find that nothing is on, and switch it off again.
Is TV still that big in the USA? (Germany here.)
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They would have to delete the memory inside the brain every time someone steps outside.
Yes, they would. That's what scientists are for, to develop solutions to problems like this.
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There is another social medium, without which the whole event's existence can't even be proven: Good old fashioned direct human-to-human communication.
I was wondering the same thing. Wouldn't "ticketed fans can't 'produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or disseminating) any material or information about the Event" mean that anyone wearing merchandise from one of the teams (hats, shirts, etc.) would have to refrain from looking either happy or sad when leaving the stadium? Somebody driving by might get the result without listening to a sponsoring radio station. If you don't enforce the contract on the masses of people leaving the stadium and shouti
Any Surprise? (Score:3, Insightful)
Students are a mere adornment at these football institutions. Football for the students? What a quaint idea . . .
Pssst! Hey, buddie! (Score:2, Interesting)
There was this ball game the other day...no, really! And since no one was paying attention, and no one was permitted to share in the reality, NOBODY SHOWED UP.
Are these the same boneheads who though the Federal government were smart enough to blow 20,000 to 30,000 times the "Cash for Clunkers" program, yet Clunkers was a dismal failure? (The fed is inept, period. No matter which country you talk about.)
These people smell like the RIAA...
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you know what I love? opinions that make clearly verifiable claims, like, "The fed is inept, period. No matter which country you talk about" yet have no desire to actually verify that claim.
Wait, national government isn't generally inept!?
lolwut!?!?
I have to guess you sort of missed the last 3 thousand years of human history, particularly the last couple of hundred, and most especially the last 60-80? I'd say that's all the "verification" any rational being would need.
The *only* things government is actuall
Censor all Posters (Score:2)
Sounds like they need to be sent the message by having all their logos and posters covered with something like "Censored for due to communication of existence of teams and stadium - they don't exist".
That is just an idea thrown to the wind, if you decide to really do it is your choice.
This reply (Score:2)
What is a social network? (Score:2)
Naturally, the summary focuses sensationalistically on the popular buzzwords du jour: Twitter, Facebook, et-fucking-cetera. But the actual wording of the ban seems to be much more broad than this - it would supposedly ban somebody describing anything about a game on a regular cell-phone call. You couldn't call your wife and say "sorry, I'll be home late, the game is going into overtime."
Which to me, raises another question, why do we refer to the privileged sites (MySpace, Twitter, Facebook) as "social netw
They aren't interested in fans (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, in a way, they are. What I'm trying to say is that they couldn't care less if you tweet to your friends or post to Facebook.
What they ARE interested in is controlling coverage of the game that competes with that of CBS. If you happen to be working for a newspaper, Web site, TV station, blog, or podcast that hasn't been blessed by CBS and/or the SEC, they're gunning for you. After all, you might do something crazy like publish real-time coverage of a game, a frequently-updated scoreboard, or, heaven forbid, you might interview a player. Want a video clip to use? Pay up. Want to post that footage you got of a player sucker-punching an official? Not unless you get approval. Want to do anything that CBS or the SEC doesn't want you to do? They'll show you the exit and place a boot in your ass at no extra charge.
If you want to really piss off the SEC, forget a mass tweet protest. No, start an unauthorized Web site providing coverage of SEC events, and make it better than what the SEC and CBS offer. That'll get their attention in a big way.
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This is starting to happen more and more with venues. I was at a public music festival in Tempe, AZ recently. It is an all-day, evening outdoor event on public grounds. I was stopped for carrying a pro-grade SLR camera. Apparently the event coordinators had signed away coverage of the event, and ones of the demands was that no one be permitted to take photos or shoot video using anything more than a common digicam or cell phone.
The reason was obviously exclusivity; the licensees didn't want any media footag
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Bingo. This is all in reaction to something that happened last year (sorry but the details are fuzzy and my internet-fu failed to bring up the story). Someone (a student I think) was liveblogging a football game, and basically giving a play by play of what
A Little Clarification (Score:4, Informative)
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By accepting or using a media credential (âoeCredentialâ) for access to any game or athletic contest sponsored or hosted by the Southeastern Conference (the âoeSECâ) or by any one or more of its member institutions (herein an âoeEventâ or the âoeEventsâ) each person and entity issued such a Credential (herein referred to, along with the employer of each such person, collectively as a âoeBearerâ) agrees to the following terms and conditions:
Bearer will be afforded access to video and audio of broadcast Events for use on Bearerâ(TM)s official news website(s), at no premium or charge. Otherwise, except as specifically permitted herein (with respect to online, non-archived simulcasts), Bearer shall not post, place or distribute video (or audio from broadcast feeds) of any Event (including any Bearer Generated Video of an Event) on or through the internet or any other new media distribution platform...
So, being the proud owner of a media credential get's you what? The ability to post a video or audio segment, created by someone else, to your site? Why bother going to the game? Just redirect your News site to the SEC site.
As to general bans on recording live experiences, this is nothing new. Sporting Organizations started banning rebroadcast of events a long time ago. It started as a way to combat cheating on gambling where the same game was broadcast a
Re:A Little Clarification (Score:5, Informative)
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Ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole mega-sport-corp thing strikes me as utterly ludicrous. Does anyone here remember when sport was about the actual game?
As far as I can tell it all started going downhill as soon as some guy figured out he could make money off sporting events.
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Nothing new (Score:3, Informative)
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A few years ago that happened at the World Football Championships. Heineken (beer brewery) gave everyone a big hat with their logo, but the competition had bought the right to advertize. Since the hats were very popular with the Dutch fans, some games had tens of thousands of people trying to enter with that hat. They were all impounded.
So the next time someone tried this, it was Bavaria this time, they passed out trousers :)
You think that might have foiled the officials, but no. Not to be stopped by this,
To add another Shirky quote... (Score:3, Insightful)
To add another Shirky quote...
"The loss of control you fear is already in the past."
Wow They Really Don't Get It! (Score:5, Interesting)
They already corrected it: (Score:3, Informative)
http://twitter.com/SECSportsUpdate
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If you've ever been in an SEC stadium with 90,000 other people trying to use their cell phones, you'll understand that live streaming Just Ain't Happenin'â. Text messages are about all you can reliably send/receive during a game.
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Why would the SEC rather see stiffer news competition than $3 billion in their account? Or why would CBS rather see high ticket sales? Your post makes no sense
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You pay with a credit card? You're a famous blogger?
They can get their free coffee at the dining hall (Score:2)
While I do agree that it's a little, I dunno, unfair to the students, I would point out that the schools can and do give them 'athletic scholarships', including tuition, room, board, and possibly other expenses. At a lot of these large Universities, that package deal could be worth something like $30,000 - $60,000 year (maybe more at some, I'm not sure). They can get all the free food, soda, and coffee they want at the University dining services, included in their 'scholarship'. Heck, it wouldn't surprise m
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No...they are NOT bringing in the money for the schools. They are bringing in the money for the FOOTBALL program. and as for benefits...In a perfect reflection of the reality in America, the top athletes get whatever they want, whenever they want with almost ZERO chance of repercussions. The less talented, support crew...get pretty much nothing, and run a much larger risk of being thrown under the bus by an uncaring administration as a sacrificial goat.
Pleasant dreams.
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I don't know about you, but I fully expect to be able to speak my mind even if it does involve national security.