Despite the fact that Sky Television has the exclusive rights to
broadcast the live action from the West Indies, Cricinfo.com is using computer
animation to provide ball-by-ball coverage to non-Sky viewers.
A leading media law expert believes that Cricinfo is likely to
have stayed on the right side of the law, but says that a similarly
inventive trick by BBC news programme Newsnight did not manage to
avoid a copyright breach.
Cricinfo, which is owned by Wisden, the company behind the
Wisden Cricketing Almanac, uses data gathered by employees to
simulate the action. The involvement of humans in the process is
crucial, says Kim Walker, Head of Intellectual Property with
Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM.
"Sky clearly own the copyright in the broadcast and that is what
they have paid millions of pounds for and the question really is
whether what cricinfo.com are doing is copying that broadcast –
copying that copyright work," Walker told weekly technology podcast
OUT-LAW Radio.
"It seems to me that if they have technologies, a software
application which literally captures the broadcast and tracks it
and converts it into an animated form then I think it is pretty
hard to argue that is not copying the broadcast and therefore an
infringement of copyright," said Walker.
"If, on the other hand, what they are doing is some guy is
manually looking at the television screen and using his own efforts
to create a new animated version of what is going on in the field
of play over in the Caribbean, then that may not be an infringement
of copyright because the cricinfo.com guy may be creating his own
copyright work, albeit based on what he knows through the broadcast
is going on on the field of play."
Wisden said that it had carefully consulted lawyers before going
ahead with the simulations in this week's World Cup. "Cricinfo 3D
is based on public domain information gathered by our scorers who
record a number of factors such as where the ball pitched, the type
of shot played and where the ball goes in the field," said a Wisden
statement. "That data is then fed as an xml to anyone who has
Cricinfo 3D running on their desktops and the software generates an
animation based on this data."
Newsnight tried a similar simulation trick in recent days when
it wanted to publish a photo of Conservative Party leader David
Cameron in coat-tails finery as a member of a posh dining club
while at Oxford University. Newspapers were prevented from
publishing the politically damaging picture when the photographers
withdrew the copyright.
Newsnight commissioned an artist to paint the photograph in
oils, which it then showed. But Walker says that this is unlikely
to have got the programme off the copyright hook.
"A photograph of a photograph is still an infringement of
copyright in the original photograph and if you make an oil
painting you are still copying the photograph," he said. "You might
be adapting it from one medium to another but that is still an
infringement of copyright."
"There is an exemption from copyright infringement of fair
dealing with the copyright work for the purpose of reporting
current events," said Walker. "But the problem with that is that it
does not apply to photographs."
