What is it with sports leagues and their desire to limit how their fans can enjoy the game? There's Major League Baseball, who keeps trying to insist that
they own the facts related to a game, and no one can use them without
paying MLB first. Then, there's the NFL, who
freaked out about TiVo and also tried to
ban any broadcasters from using "unauthorized" video feeds to show what happens in the stadium (i.e., no sideline cameras any more). They've been particularly fussy about the Super Bowl, however, forcing advertisers to
call it "the Big Game" or whatever, claiming excessive control over the trademark (remember, trademarks are really designed to prevent consumer confusion, not to give holders full control over the mark).
The latest situation is perhaps even more bizarre -- but tragically, seems to fall closer to a correct legal reading of a really poorly written law. The NFL apparently nastygrammed a church for planning to host a Super Bowl party. The original complaint was first that the church was charging people, but also that they used the term "Super Bowl" (as if people would somehow believe that the church was associated with the NFL?). After the church agreed to let people in for free and not use the term, the NFL continued to complain, saying that
showing the Super Bowl on a screen larger than 55 inches represents copyright infringement. While we, at first, doubted the reality of this, Ben Austro sent in the fact that it is, indeed, spelled out in copyright law that once you get above 55", you may be talking about a "public performance," though, as Ben notes, the wording sounds like it was clearly written by a lobbyist.
