NCAA Outlaws Live Blogging from Press Boxes : Are Sports Bloggers Broadcasting?

Have you seen these blog postings at Deadspin about the NCAA outlawing live blogging from press boxes?

So a Blogger and a Pig Walk Into a Press Box ...

The NCAA Hates the Series of Tubes

The reason for the NCAA rule is found at the June 8, 2007 posting at BaseballAmerica.com, where Aaron Fitt writes in NCAA Stifles Supra-Regional Coverage of College Baseball World Series:

"Word came down today that the NCAA will no longer allow blogging from the press box during super-regionals because blogging “is considered a live representation of the game” and all live representations of the games are the exclusive property of the NCAA’s official rights holders."

The specific reason for the rule is the NCAA contract with ESPN, as Josh Centor at the Double-A- Zone, a blog close to the NCAA, writes:

"On Sunday, Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Brian Bennett was kicked out of the press box at the NCAA Baseball Super Regional. Bennett wasn’t drunk, rowdy or naked, instead getting the boot for his despicable blogging habit.

Due to the NCAA’s broadcasting agreement with ESPN, bloggers are not permitted to update their sites with in-game coverage from the baseball press box. In-game updates include providing readers with the score, inning of the game, roster moves, etc. The policy was enacted at a baseball game, but applies to all NCAA championship events.....

I find all of this quite unnecessary. The world of media has changed and I think this policy makes my organization look arcane because journalists now publish their thoughts in real time on the Internet. I don’t know anybody in their right mind who would choose in-game commentary on a blog over a television broadcast, so I don’t see how there’s competition between our partners and independent bloggers who have received credentials."

That this is an unfortunate - or at least from the standpoint of public relations, poorly managed and snap - NCAA decision is beyond question. In our modern day of mobile devices, much more information is leaving the stadiums during the games than in the days when you had to run to a pay telephone in the depths of the stadium to pass on live information to persons elsewhere.

Nevertheless, many modern college sports could not be financed as they are without TV money, so that when TV broadcasting companies holding exclusive broadcasting rights to sports events speak up, the NCAA listens.

This holds true even if ESPN's argument that "blogging" is "broadcasting" is a matter of definition that surely has not been decided by the courts, though it has been written in the blogging world by some that blogging is broadcasting. Obviously, it will be up to the lawyers to include "realtime blogging" in their broadcasting definitions when broadcasting contracts are made in the future.

Just Stringing Along - String Theory as Epicycles - The World as a Rubber Band

We posted the following comment to Cosmic Variance but the string was "snipped" after the word and which is marked below in orange - but what else could we expect from string theory? [actually, the snip was caused by the way html commands are handled as text]

"snip"

that word describes our double-edged scissored view of string theory, which seems like a postmodern system of epicycles .... or ... do branes have brains?

At
http://www.lawpundit.com/blog/2005/01/belief-without-proof-evidence-and.htm
we write:

"What are the main logical problems with string theory (alleged physical laws) from our point of view?

a. Perceived physical reality in physics is always a function of the system of measurement. Measurements are by definition relations presupposing frames of reference to be measured by some sort of "measurement ruler". Thus, "measured" reality is

1) a function of the frames of reference chosen for the relationships being measured (for example, particles, waves or "strings") and

2) the means of measurement (motion, inertia, velocity, weight, dimension, extension, contraction, etc.) "....

Speaking of "measure", has anyone considered the rather simple idea that "God" did not "make" the universe, but that God "is" the measured universe....

Perhaps the world is an "ultimate" string - but no string ever vibrates by itself, but needs to be plucked by something - frankly, we think that the idea of an infinitely extensible and unsnippable vibrating "rubber band" is better than simple string theory because it would more accurately reflect a yo-yo world alternating between the impossibles of absolute something and absolute nothing ....

For the math freaks this means that the Universe U could conceivably be defined by the formula
U = > 0 and < 1
where U is greater than 0 and less than 1 and where 0 and 1 both represent totality and singularity, i.e. absolute mass and absolute void, neither of which, apparently, are possibilities... which then results in the world that we "appear" to have....