Re: ICC targets YouTube World Cup clips
While naturally I do not endorse piracy, considering how limited cricket’s appeal is in the world; coupled with very restrictive (and in some case prohibitively expensive) tv coverage in most countries, I tend to agree with Andrew Miller in his article “Once more cricket shoots itself in the foot”. Some excerpts are as follows:
Does this game know of any other ways to shoot itself in the foot? Only three days ago it was suggested on this website that the events of the past week might serve as a wake-up call for cricket’s fiscally obsessed powerbrokers. Fat chance. A game run increasingly by lawyers for lawyers, has deemed it necessary to go to war on the very online enthusiasts who can spread the word of a game whose reputation has been dragged through the mincer.
Wikipedia, that other giant of online information-sharing, quotes a US television executive on the subject of YouTube’s copyright infringements. “If I found part of a successful show up on YouTube today, I’d probably pull it down immediately,” says the source. “If I had a show that wasn’t doing so well in the ratings and could use the promotion, I wouldn’t be in a rush to do that.”
How well is cricket doing in the ratings right now? A certain murder-mystery investigation is currently storming the charts, but in the absence of the slighted Indian audience, who else is rushing to tune in? Australian feedbackers to Cricinfo on Saturday night were in a fury that their domestic TV channels were not airing their showdown against South Africa, while England fans without a satellite dish are equally up the creek.