The UK's Premier (football) League has put fans on notice that it's preparing a crackdown against those who post match GIFs and Vines online. The short clips might only be a few seconds, but the football giant says they are illegal and will be dealt with.

When Steve Wilhite of Compuserve created the GIF format in the late 80s, he probably didn’t imagine it would be in use more than a quarter of a century later.

Against the odds, in 2012 the GIF celebrated its 25th birthday, a fitting tribute to a format that has not only endured but also enjoyed a resurgence alongside today’s meme culture. However, the tiny video clips available in today’s GIFs aren’t appreciated by everyone.

On the eve of the new season, the UK’s Premier League has been putting fans on notice that it will no longer tolerate the unauthorized distribution of its copyright works. In addition to going after those who live stream full matches, the football giant says it now intends to tackle individuals who post short clips online.

According to the League, the problem is being caused by fans who record goals and upload them as GIFs and Vines within a few minutes of the event. These spread virally around blogs and sites such as Twitter and are enthusiastically consumed, especially on mobile devices.

“You can understand that fans see something, they can capture it, they can share it, but ultimately it is against the law,” Dan Johnson, director of communications at the Premier League, told the BBC.

These over-enthusiastic fans sharing a few seconds of footage – often at particularly low quality – are apparently causing financial hardship for the most-watched football league in the world. So, to bring that to an end, the Premier League are looking towards a technological solution.

“It’s a breach of copyright and we would discourage fans from doing it, we’re developing technologies like gif crawlers, Vine crawlers, working with Twitter to look to curtail this kind of activity,” Johnson said.

“I know it sounds as if we’re killjoys but we have to protect our intellectual property.”

Going after those who place short video clips online is not new. There have been several reports in the past few months of UFC owner Zuffa taking action against individuals who upload GIFs, with a recent purge in July against content hosted on popular hoster GfyCat.

While fans insist that GIFs of goals and knockouts are simply free promotion, the rights to show such things don’t come cheap. UK tabloid The Sun has an app which shows Premier League goals within two minutes of the moment, but fans have to pay £7 per month ($11.68) to access it.

As the UFC have no doubt realized by now (and the Premier League soon will), taking down GIFs will be a huge resource drain and will do little to stop availability of content. The files are too tiny, far too easily shared and come from potentially thousands of directions. Add to this the problem of having to nuke content in near real-time, and this becomes an unsolvable problem, at least by enforcement means.

http://torrentfreak.com/premier-league-to-clamp-down-on-gifs-and-vines-140815/


etc etc etc

 

yeah...these dummies need to wise up that the technology revolution is happening. Get with the times or get left behind.

They'll get bored eventually once they realize they're wasting time and resources

 

This is what happens when you pay people three hundred thousand pound a week to kick a bag of compressed air,
they have got find the money from somewhere

 

It's also what happens when people, take and give away, what wasn't theirs to begin with

 

kettles,teapots and colours

Ironic really when you think about it most people in Britain are filmed every day of there lives,but we can not go to the government and demand royalty's from the images that are stolen from the public every day.

 

That is an absolutely great point.

 

And if everyone did it would probably bankrupt the government

 

Exactly! There was a recent story that soon Google is going to be launching a set of satellites allowing them to zoom in closer than ever before. They will be allowed to actually zoom in on your face but hey that's okay because it's a multibillion dollar corporation that is making money off of you. That's MUCH different than say taking a picture of some stupid sports game and sharing it. If anything it's worse...much much worse because they're eroding privacy the world over and basically exploiting the whole human race. Oh yeah and they read your e-mail and then use it to build a marketing profile on you that they sell to scumbag companies that turn around and sell you crap you don't want. Not so black and white now huh One Reason?

 

I am on google earth

I got caught out one day when their camera car was taking street view photos and I didn't spot it fast enough , otherwise I would have mooned at the camera

but I ain't telling anyone where I am though

 

We will have to walk round shaking our head like in four lions so its looks blurred.

So people need to get image rights like Mr Beckham, and not a few pound's I'm taking twelve figures so when the law suites come multibillion dollar companies can not pay the trillions and are crushed by the the law suites.

play them at there own game