What is it with athletic organizations being so uptight about public exposure lately?
First it’s Nike trying its darnedest to prevent a video of an amateur slam dunking a ball over NBA star LeBron James from going public. Now it’s Major League Baseball’s turn …
A portion of the video of The Daily Show host Jon Stewart mocking the coverage of Barack Obama’s first pitch during the All-Star game—the league failed to show the president’s pitch actually reach the plate—was yanked from the show’s Web site and Hulu.com at the behest of the MLB, reports, All Things Digital blog, which is part of The Wall Street Journal Web site.
All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka had this report:
What happened? The story, via Viacom [which owns Comedy Central, the network that airs The Daily Show] officials, is that pro baseball officials contacted them this week and told them to take down the Obama footage, which it owns.
The argument, I’m told, is that the MLB was fine with Stewart (and every other TV show in the country) using the clip under “fair use” terms–the footage itself was a news story, and Stewart was adding value via his commentary, etc. But it balked at the notion of the footage remaining in Viacom’s archives, and circulating on the Web, forever.
None of that makes any sense, of course: There’s no reason that Stewart’s use of the clip should be okay, but only for a limited time. And if Viacom wanted to spend time fighting MLB on this, it certainly could have.
Suppose when you're as busy as MLB is ignoring your players' steroid abuse this is the kind of thing you do to pass the time.
Subscribe to this blog's feed
CTYLTQBHLWMHRN
Sacs Lancel ont été rigide et manque d'ingéniosité , à cet effet sur ??le marché pour eux a diminué .... 
RSS
Comments (5)
CTYLTQBHLWMHRN
Sacs Lancel ont été rigide et manque d'ingéniosité , à cet effet sur ??le marché pour eux a diminué .
Posted by sac Lancel | March 10, 2012 12:29 AM
Posted on March 10, 2012 00:29
Jon Stewart should just tell MLB the clip's not on the web. Based on how they believe players when they deny their steroid use wearing suits the size of circus tents, they would be forced to believe Stewart. Right?
Posted by TJ | July 28, 2009 11:57 AM
Posted on July 28, 2009 11:57
Unanymous you just made me chuckle. I'm imagining MLB's front office where they drug test their employees obsessively, while the players juice pretty much whenever they feel like it.
Posted by Michael Sebastian | July 24, 2009 8:20 AM
Posted on July 24, 2009 08:20
I wonder whether MLB has mandatory drug testing of its own employees. What else would explain its bizarre decision-making?
Posted by Unanymous | July 23, 2009 7:33 PM
Posted on July 23, 2009 19:33
Almost as funny as John's comments!
Posted by Susan | July 23, 2009 11:29 AM
Posted on July 23, 2009 11:29