NY Mets Rickrolled... But MLB Uses DMCA To Shut Down The Fun
from the never-gonna-give-you-up... dept
Rickrolling, the geek-inspired prank of tricking folks into watching a video of Rick Astley's pop hit "Never Gonna Give You Up," has been way too popular over the past few months, but looked like it was finally going to die a painful death thanks to NY Times' coverage and YouTube's April Fool's joke. But, apparently the fun was just getting started. The NY Mets have been running a contest to see what song will be played during the 8th inning of home games all season. While there were a bunch of preset choices, the Mets also left a write-in options -- leaving open the opportunity for Digg and Fark to "Rickroll the Mets."And... it worked... sorta. Apparently, the write-in votes dominated the contests, but the Mets are backing out of the agreement. Instead of accepting the Astley song, they're playing it and a selection of other songs over the next few games to see which one gets the biggest fan reaction -- and will then use that song all year long. However, the Astley song got the home opener nod, and was played during the 8th inning of Tuesday's game.
Now here's where the story gets interesting. Digg celebrated the achievement by linking to a video on YouTube of the song playing. But the folks at MLB Advanced Media wasted absolutely no time at all in rushing out a DMCA notice to take the video down, suggesting that it wasn't a big fan of being Rickrolled. Of course, it wasn't fast enough for the video to be saved by others [ed: link removed]. And, of course, there were some fans at the ballpark who also recorded the Rickrolling live. Man, that's a lot of booing. While MLB shouldn't be able to take down those fan videos, given how MLB has claimed ownership over all sorts of stuff, I wouldn't put it past them to try. Either way, would it really have been so troublesome for MLB to leave that brief video clip up?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
"saved by others" link
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: "saved by others" link
Well, that's what I get for blocking javascript. I didn't see anything at that site other than the video itself. All of the NSFW stuff was via javascript. The link has been removed now.
Very sorry about that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Intellectual Property, Hot Dogs, and American Pie
e
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Intellectual Property, Hot Dogs, and American Pie
Really? ( casual perusal of the interwebs should reveal to you how most of us feel)
Ok, sounds good.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Intellectual Property, Hot Dogs, and American Pie
No one is getting up in arms about it for several reasons. The main one being the majority of people in the US do not even know it happens, or understand what it means.
Capitalism is a good idea, but you HAVE to put some checks on the corporations. Instead most Americans have been brain washed by businesses into thinking some very stupid things.
Oh and the other reason people aren't getting up in arms about it is because most people don't have a gun of any type, nor know that armed protests were actually insinuated by the founding fathers are a legitimate form of protest.
Note I say insinuated. AFAIK they never flat out said it, beyond the famous quote about the second amendment.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The link is NSFW, oh my the sky is falling, the sky is falling. Fuckin jerkoffs just STFU already.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
By "just" I mean that the NSFW-ness comes from those and not the primary content of the page. I don't intend to trivialize the fact that the page is VERY NSFW, and the link really should have been marked as such.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
fix the damn link
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: fix the damn link
The link is gone. As I said, it appears the NSFW content was ad banners that I didn't see because I block javascript on unknown sites. So to me, all I saw was the video itself.
Sorry about that, but it definitely was not intentional.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
fix the link please!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Just joking it would actually be amusing to go to a ballpark a time or two, maybe.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Saw it
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No MLB for me this year...
Oh yeah..
Life is like a hurricane here in Duckburg
Race cars, lasers, aeroplanes - it's a duck blur
You might solve a mystery or rewrite history
Duck Tales, Oo-oo
Tales of derring-do, bad and good luck tales, oo-oo
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Come on folks, show some restraint in the meantime.
But please fix the link.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
heh...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
nice pron link
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
all you NSFW bandwagon jumpers
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I missed the link
I can understand them trying to ban a video of the live act (everyone else is banning videos of their games, why not the mets) but I can't understand why they would try to ban the song itself.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I missed the link
It was the video of the Mets getting rickrolled... but apparently it was surrounding by seriously NSFW ads.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
@ 25. Anon
Most of what kind of people? Most of all people in the entire world? In America? In a certain state or region? I'm from Oklahoma and gun ownership proliferates. I'm not complaining. by the way, I'm just noting that in some areas of America, gun ownership and education is still going strong.
By the way, did you know that you can buy a rifle at Wal-Mart with no ID and no waiting? So if you wanna blame the gov't for none of us having AK-47s, that would be fine, but you can't say that no one has guns or can get guns.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]