Yer Out! p.

By: Mark Fitzgerald

Major League Baseball drops pitch for control of news photos
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL has dropped its controversial attempt to control all news photos shot in its ballparks.
In the days before Opening Day, several ballclubs tried to get news photographers seeking press credentials to sign agreements that all photographs taken in their parks ? whether at batting practice, in the locker room afterward or during the game itself ? were property of the respective clubs.
An earlier version of the agreement even extended the property claim to news accounts of the game and interviews with players and staff.
However, Major League Baseball withdrew the fill-in-the-blanks agreements after numerous big news organizations protested and refused to sign.
"It was something Major League Baseball asked us to do, and they've since discontinued it," said Karen Nacella, a press representative of the Philadelphia Phillies.
The Phillies and the Cincinnati Reds apparently were the two clubs most conscientious about trying to get the agreements signed.
Many other clubs apparently made no attempt to link credentials to the controversial agreements.
At the Chicago Tribune, for example, associate managing editor/sports Richard Leslie said neither Chicago team asked the paper to sign any agreements.
Attempting to enforce the agreement in Chicago could have been tricky because the Chicago Cubs, the city's National League franchise, is owned by the Chicago Tribune's parent corporation, the Tribune Co.
Under the proposed Major League Baseball agreement, Tribune Co., in effect, would be claiming as its own property photographs taken by the Chicago Sun-Times and other area competitors of the Chicago Tribune.
This was not the first time Major League Baseball has attempted to claim news material as the property of its individual clubs. Similar, but more low-key, attempts were made in 1985 and 1990.
It appears no photographer or other journalist was denied credentials for refusing to sign the agreement.
News organizations learned of the proposed agreement about a week before Opening Day, said Richard N. Winfield, a media attorney with the New York law firm Rogers & Wells.
"The original draft was expansive and almost breathtaking in what [baseball] claimed," Winfield said. "If you covered a ball game, your story was their property."
On behalf of his clients ? the Associated Press, Gannett Co. and Time Inc., Winfield wrote Major League Baseball to protest the agreements.
At his urging, other big news organizations, including the New York Times, Newhouse Newspapers, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, also wrote in protest.
Major League Baseball then drafted a revised agreement that applied only to photographers. That proposal, too, was unacceptable to news organizations, said attorney Winfield and officials of news organizations.
"I would find any kind of agreement that restricts or otherwise controls what images, text or audio we can produce or that assigns the rights to somebody else ? we at UPI find that to be totally unacceptable," said United Press International executive vice president and executive editor Steve Geimann.
Sportswriters, too, were wary of the revised agreement, even though it would have applied only to photographers.
"I don't like it because what is the next step? Can we use quotes [obtained during the season] for free-lance stories we write in the winter?" said Chicago Sun-Times columnist Dave Van Dyck.
Baseball press representatives have told some sportswriters and photographers that Major League Baseball's ultimate aim in claiming news photographs as club property was the creation of a stockhouse of photographs. Under this vision, baseball and the news media would share royalties on the use of the images.
Repeated phone calls to Major League Baseball and Major League Baseball Properties, the sport's licensing arm, were not returned.