Twitter Sidelines Sports Highlight Accounts

By Agence France-Presse | Updated: 14 October 2015 18:26 IST

Twitter sidelined a pair of popular sports publication accounts after fielding complaints they ran afoul of copyright rules for sharing video snippets from US football games.

An @SBNationGIF account at Twitter remained out of commission on Tuesday while that of @Deadspin was back in action.

"We are working with Twitter to resolve the issue and restore the account," VoxMedia said of its @SBNationGIF.

"We take copyright infringement issues seriously and always try to keep our use of unlicensed third-party footage within the bound of fair use."

The account was suspended on Monday. Twitter received a complaint from sports video editing firm XOS Digital that @SBNationGIF had fired off tweets containing college football game content protected by copyright.

An @Deadspin account was taken offline by Twitter for slightly more than two hours late Monday, reportedly due to copyright complaints centered on video of US National Football League play.

The Deadspin account belongs to Gawker Media, an executive from which sent a tweet saying it appear the copyright complaint came from the NFL.

Twitter declined to comment on specific account suspensions, in accordance with its policy.

Copies of take-down requests showed that NFL showed that the NFL complained that Twitter's website was "infringing copyrighted materials owned and/or controlled by the National Football League."

A spokeswoman for the NFL told AFP that the organization sent Twitter routine copyright notices requesting that more than a dozen links to pirated game footage or highlights be disabled but it did not ask for the suspension of any accounts.

A copyright complaint aimed at @Deadspin also came from the Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed martial arts promotion company, according to Twitter.

The ease with which video of key game moments can be captured and shared, sometimes in seconds-long snippets known as GIFs, has set the stage for fans to enjoy matches without leagues or teams benefitting from advertising or subscription revenue.

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