By: Staff Reports League's suit against 'The New York Times' threatens all newspapers.
Best solution: Organized resistance.
this editorial appeared July 24, 2000, in Editor & Publisher magazine.
The NBA's got game - there's no argument about that.
But the game and the bushel baskets of money it generates are apparently
no longer enough for the National Basketball Association. Now the league
wants to reach into newspapers and specify exactly when and how they can
use photographs that newsrooms assigned, shot, processed, and paid for.
In a lawsuit filed earlier this month in New York State Supreme Court,
the NBA is claiming The New York Times has no right to sell a collection
of five photographs taken during last year's basketball playoffs. The
league's legal argument hangs on a rather thin reed: the small print
that lies unread on the back of the NBA news photographer press
credential. The NBA's view - in court, anyway - is that this amounts to
a binding contract limiting 'use of NBA photographs to news coverage of
the specific games for which the credential was issued.'' That's a
rather dubious proposition, but it's really beside the point.
What the NBA wants to do is to take control or, more accurately, to take
a financial cut of every professional basketball image that the print
media publishes. That's the subtext of all the NBA blather about
protecting their 'intellectual property.'' League lawyers are unable
to explain exactly what legal alchemy transforms a newspaper
journalist's photograph into NBA property, intellectual or otherwise.
Time apparently has something to do with it. Game shots published the
next day are OK, the league seems to be saying, but the same photograph
published at season's end somehow belongs to the NBA. It is a nonsensical
argument from a league that would still be fielding teams in Syracuse,
N.Y., or Fort Wayne, Ind., were it not for the in-depth coverage the
game gets from newspapers and other media.
The NBA, like any other professional sport, depends on news and feature
coverage for its very existence - and neither the league nor newspapers
should forget that. That's why we were disappointed to see, in Joe
Strupp's account of the lawsuit in last week's issue, that some photo
editors think the NBA has the right to dictate how newspapers use their
own photographs.
Newspapers wouldn't let a government entity control its product, and it
ought not cede authority to a jockocracy. The NBA suit isn't the first
such incursion from sports and it surely won't be the last. The good
news is that leagues invariably back off their rash plans when faced
with unified media resistance. With the NBA now trying to set itself up
as newspaper photo czar, this is no time to be 'reasonable'' or
'understanding.'' It's time for newspapers to post up.
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Staff Reports
(c) Copyright 2000, Editor & Publisher
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