FIFA Is Not Okay With Dancing In Front of the TV

It’s World Cup time. That means goals. And goals means goal celebrations. Here’s a compilation of U.S. soccer fans celebrating a last-second goal in the 2010 World Cup. Ah, memories. Anyway, FIFA apparently doesn’t like it when fans celebrate near their television sets. It sent a takedown notice aimed at a five-second video of a young boy celebrating in his living room.

Following a goal in the England-Tunisia match, Kathryn Conn posted a five-second video of her seven-year-old son celebrating. Conn explained that her son “is a massive Spurs fan and he absolutely worships Harry Kane so he started dancing around in the living room.” Unfortunately, the dancing occurred in front of a television still playing the game. And if there’s one thing FIFA is serious about, it’s their copyright.

Conn says she woke up the next morning to find the video deleted from Twitter and a notice that it was due to a DMCA takedown notice from FIFA, which apparently was worried that a blurry background shot of a soccer game in a five-second video would make people less likely to watch 2018’s most-viewed TV event in England.

Hmmm. A dancing child in a short video with copyrighted material playing incidentally in the background? We hope that it won’t take 10 years of litigation for FIFA to learn its lesson here. It should respect fair use and respect its fans.

Date: 
June 18, 2018
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