NY Mets Rickrolled... But MLB Uses DMCA To Shut Down The Fun

from the never-gonna-give-you-up... dept

Wed, Apr 9th 2008 5:03am — Mike Masnick

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

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, ny mets, rickroll

26 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

impiri, 9 Apr 2008 @ 5:56am

"saved by others" link
Uh, you might want to fix the "saved by others" link. (Very NSFW)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
eleete, 9 Apr 2008 @ 6:04am

Intellectual Property, Hot Dogs, and American Pie
Jeez, Why aren't more Americans Outraged at this sort of litigious behavior ? Why don't many see it as greed ? (Shaking Head) I'd love to visit America again, as soon as I can get my hands on a Time Machine.

e
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2008 @ 6:13am

Damn it, fix your "saved by others" link you a$$holes. I thought I could trust Techdirt at work, guess not.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2008 @ 6:30am

Seriously, that "saved by others" link is NSFW, don't click it!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2008 @ 6:51am

All this NSFW talk makes me want to click the link more to see what all the fuss is about...guess I'll have to wait :(
[ link to this | view in thread ]
STFU, 9 Apr 2008 @ 6:54am

Re:
Get back to work and stop worrying about the link, it's fine.

The link is NSFW, oh my the sky is falling, the sky is falling. Fuckin jerkoffs just STFU already.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Michael Kine, 9 Apr 2008 @ 6:59am

fix the damn link
take the advice and fix the damn link. I'm glad no one was around at work when I clicked on the link in my RSS feed. I didn't see the comments before I did or else I wouldn't have done it. You guys know you can get people fired for that kind of crap?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2008 @ 7:00am

It's just porn ad banners on the site.

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 thread ]
Johnny B Good, 9 Apr 2008 @ 7:13am

fix the link please!
Please fix the NSFW link. I went nuts after clicking that link in my rss reader.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Hoeppner, 9 Apr 2008 @ 7:15am

People actually watch baseball?

Just joking it would actually be amusing to go to a ballpark a time or two, maybe.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
James, 9 Apr 2008 @ 7:18am

Saw it
It was mostly commentary and you could hear the song (a bit) in the background... honestly, rather than random MLB bs I wish someone had recorded random facial expressions of people in the crowd going WTF?? LOL
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Ruck Doll, 9 Apr 2008 @ 7:22am

No MLB for me this year...
Who owns the patents on Baseball?

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 thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2008 @ 7:23am

Yeah, this should NOT be any links that are unsafe for work in this.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2008 @ 7:36am

Someone Who shall remain nameless but their initals might or might not be "MM" appears to be asleep.

Come on folks, show some restraint in the meantime.

But please fix the link.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Adam, 9 Apr 2008 @ 7:42am

heh...
i helped rickroll the mets, sucks the MLB has absolutely zero sense of humor!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Darren, 9 Apr 2008 @ 7:55am

nice pron link
good story, but was ruined by the porn link.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Sea Man, 9 Apr 2008 @ 8:41am

Here's an idea. Get back to work and quit crying about the NSFW banner ads. Pussies.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mike (profile), 9 Apr 2008 @ 8:48am

Re: "saved by others" link
Uh, you might want to fix the "saved by others" link. (Very NSFW)

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 thread ]
Mike (profile), 9 Apr 2008 @ 8:51am

Re: fix the damn link
take the advice and fix the damn link. I'm glad no one was around at work when I clicked on the link in my RSS feed. I didn't see the comments before I did or else I wouldn't have done it. You guys know you can get people fired for that kind of crap?

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 thread ]
anonymous coward, 9 Apr 2008 @ 8:55am

all you NSFW bandwagon jumpers
Oh shutup, get back to work and stop browsing the WWW then
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Chronno S. Trigger, 9 Apr 2008 @ 8:56am

I missed the link
I'm at work so I missed the link. Was this video of the mets getting rickrolled or was it a video of the rickroll itself?

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 thread ]
Mike (profile), 9 Apr 2008 @ 9:34am

Re: I missed the link
I'm at work so I missed the link. Was this video of the mets getting rickrolled or was it a video of the rickroll itself?

It was the video of the Mets getting rickrolled... but apparently it was surrounding by seriously NSFW ads.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Bill Magilicutty, 9 Apr 2008 @ 10:03am

Dam first thing i did when someone said NSFW was to go look for the link myself, Im a perv.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
EVIL_BASTARD, 9 Apr 2008 @ 10:13am

Re: Intellectual Property, Hot Dogs, and American Pie
Your not going to visit America because of your perception of how we feel about DCMA?

Really? ( casual perusal of the interwebs should reveal to you how most of us feel)

Ok, sounds good.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2008 @ 10:28am

Re: Intellectual Property, Hot Dogs, and American Pie
@ eleete:

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 thread ]
Rose M. Welch, 9 Apr 2008 @ 12:01pm

@ 25. Anon
You said, "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."

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 thread ]