I Love Baseball. I Don’t So Much Love the MLB

But they are learning. From Larry’s blog:

Russ Gooberman wrote to tell a happy story about Major League Baseball.

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A month ago, I created a mashup clip of some MLB’s All-Star Game Home Run Derby. Specifically, I wanted to feature the record-breaking home run streak of Texas Rangers youngster, Josh Hamilton. So, I cut up some YouTube footage of his longest homerun of the contest, and set it to the audio of the final homerun sequence of the movie, The Natural. The next day, the mashup was featured on SportsIllustrated.com as their “Video of the Day.” Here’s My Mashup. The following day, MLB Advanced Media sent a trademark claim to YouTube, and had the video taken down.

….The interpretation of such an event in the public discourse is not for Major League Baseball to determine or influence. These events that affect our perceptions of our national pastime cannot be copyrighted. The discussion and dissemination of ideas relating to them cannot be censored. There are countless cases of MLB pursuing copyright infringements that go beyond their rights as copyright holders. Evidence of overzealous prosecution has been abundant. This Sisyphean struggle to stop any and all interpretations of MLB material will eventually fail.