"Exclusive" Web Rights Are Soooooo 1997

BoingBoing gets not just a nastygram from a law firm, but a preemptive nastygram.

Infront anticipates the possibility of unauthorised streaming and downloading of FIFA World Cup matches, other unauthorised use of clips or images of the matches and services which facilitate such activities. Infront and its agents are therefore taking active and strong measures to prevent such unlawful activities, both civilly and criminally.

In this respect you should be aware that Infront and its agents are actively monitoring your website and others to identify unlawful activity and will, if necessary, take appropriate action to ensure the protection of Infront's rights and those of its licensees.

In other words, Infront was sold exclusive online broadcasting rights and intends to defend those rights, apparently borrowing it's legal stance from The Washington Post circa 1997.

No doubt, with visions of millions of football fans happily streaming FIFA matches from its servers (and its servers alone) dancing in its head, Infront apparently thinks the Internet is a broadcast medium where one entity can "own" concepts and thoughts. This, of course, is ridiculous. Does Infront plan to go after fan websites where people post photos of their favorite players? Won't that be fun to watch?

By my count, Infront needs about half a dozen clues to bring them back to the future. Here's the most glaring one:

When you hope to make money by buying rights to stream content, you WANT people to post clips, images and whatnot. It's called free publicity, stupid. In other words, keep the lawyers at bay and let people post clips of the first round of matches and you'll have more people showing up to legally stream the second round of matches. Dumbass.

I won't even get into the notion of inferring that people are criminals BEFORE THE FACT. That one is so stupid, I won't touch it in fear of having stupid particles accidentally rub off on me and take my IQ down by several dozen points.