Premier League Working On Tech To Detect Copyright-Infringing Video Clips On Twitter

The Premier League is set to crackdown on web users who share clips of goals scored in the competition on Twitter, Facebook and Vine, claiming it infringes on the league’s intellectual property and does damage to its broadcast partners.

The practice was widespread during the recent World Cup, with spectacular goals and incidents shared on social media almost immediately after it happened, facilitated by the increased adoption of DVRs, smartphone and video sharing platforms.

However the Premier League says this is against the law and is working with Twitter to identify and remove offending posts, adding it’s working on technology such as Gif and Vine crawlers.

Premier League crackdown

“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’s Newsbeat programme. “It’s a breach of copyright and we would discourage fans from doing it.

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

Sky Sports and BT Sport have paid a record £3 billion to broadcast live games from the Premier League over a three year period, while The Sun and The Times have purchases rights to show near-live highlights for every match. It is arguably the latter that is most impacted by the almost real-time sharing of video.

Vine has been an especially popular medium for sharing these clips, owing much to its six second format and close integration with Twitter, which launched the video service last year. Vine’s terms and conditions state that no user can post content that “violates the rights of a third party, including copyright, trademark, privacy, and publicity rights.”

Previously, the Premier League has campaigned for sites that show illegal streams of matches to be blocked, but it is unclear what action it would like to see taken against Twitter and Vine users who are deemed to have posted video clips.

The Premier League had not responded TechWeekEurope’s requests for comment at the time of publication.

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