Boing Boing reader Damien, who is hanging out in the Marshall Islands, writes,
Sitting around in the Marshall Islands Resort hotel on Majuro, blasted from jetlag and too many hours inside whizzing aluminum tubes, I switched on the TV to the NHK channel… but instead of a soccer ball being kicked around on some grass, they showed this great pic below: [Due to copyright reasons, we cannot broadcast the images.]
Gotta love (if indeed the TV message is actually true…) copyright laws that somehow mess up the one thing TV is really good at — showing pictures. As our government keeps trying to ram through new copyright restrictions, this is another object lesson about how a lot of overly-restrictive copyright laws make things difficult for companies just trying to do business, and can screw TV viewers out of seeing some good soccer action!
Link.
Update: BB reader Wataru Tenga, in Tokyo, explains:
The Japanese
on the screen actually says "Broadcast rights." NHK had not obtained the
right to rebroadcast the video of the interview with the young golfer
from the commercial TV channel that originally ran it.NHK's translation may be funny, but the situation itself is pretty
normal in today's broadcast world.
