Superbowling 428
An assortment of Super Bowl tidbits: Supposedly sports gambling sites are being threatened with denial of service attacks if they don't pay protection money - also a Reuters story. Infinitus writes "The NFL's legal firm has a PDF up that outlines the NFL's intellectual property rights to words like 'Super Bowl' and 'NFL'. Including a neat little chart that tells you what you can and can't say..." VeggiePossum23 writes "Panthers Upset Patriots, 29 to 21... at least in the Sony Sponsored '989 Sports Game Before the Game' played on NFL Gameday 2004 on the PS2 Console. This annual event, held Wednesday night in Houston, has a perfect 8-year track record of picking the winner of the Super Bowl. Carolina Panthers Wide Receiver Steve Smith controlled the Panthers, winning an upset victory against New England Patriots' Wide Out Troy Brown, also controlling his own team." lordbyron writes "CBS is doing a SuperBowl of commercials that will include a vote for the best commercial in history. You can watch the top 10 now and make sure that you vote at 9pm on Sunday 1/31. It includes some classics like the Apple commercial and the exploding mosquitos from Tabasco."Wing Bowl.--->
Re:Being English, I have to ask... (Score:5, Interesting)
Beyond those who watch it because they love the game, like me, there are the people that watch it because it's an EVENT. It's an excuse to throw a party. Every culture on Earth has numerous holidays that are fairly meaningless except for as excuses to throw parties. This is one of those days for the US.
Re:Radio Contests (Score:5, Interesting)
Internet Access at the Superbowl (Score:2, Interesting)
protection money... (Score:3, Interesting)
I will not say that most gambling site are operated by/for criminals, but say that a good percentage of it are the operations of some legitimate business mans ?
My experience in this domain is that they will be able to get their hands on some money, but that said money will be delivered by Vito and Guido, and they'll be made an offer that they cannot refuse.
Maybe spammers should start spamming the mob too. Kill two birds with the same stone ?
CBS Censors MoveOn.org Ad (Score:3, Interesting)
la times op ed piece from moveon.org (Score:2, Interesting)
By Eli Pariser
Campaigns Director, MoveOn.org Voter Fund
http://www.moveon.org/r?484
When the Super Bowl is beamed into living rooms around the world Sunday, you can expect to see TV spots hyping cars, beer, razor blades, three different erectile dysfunction cures, toilet paper and snack foods.
The ads will be slick and clever, lavishly produced, brilliant in their marketing. Some, no doubt, will be sexually suggestive or violent. Most will cost $2 million to $3 million to produce and broadcast.
But here's what you won't see: a single ad about the big issues that face our country today.
Outrageous as it may sound, CBS has decided that ads selling erectile dysfunction medicines and toilet paper are appropriate for Americans, but serious discussion should be banned. An ad about our country, our war, our president, the state of our schools or the size of our budget deficit? That, in the eyes of CBS officialdom, would be too controversial.
We know, because we tried. We thought that the Super Bowl, with 130 million viewers, would be a great place to get our message out. So we held a contest on the Internet to select the best ad we could possibly run. The ad we selected -- from 1,500 submissions -- shows children cleaning offices, washing dishes and hauling trash. It ends with the question: "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1-trillion deficit?" (It's viewable at http://www.MoveOn.org ).
But even though we were willing to pony up the $1.6 million to pay for it, CBS refused to sell us the time, citing what it says is a 50-year-old policy prohibiting ads that take stands on controversial public policy issues.
CBS claims its policy is designed to keep the Citibanks and Microsofts of the world from buying time to tell Americans how to think. "It is designed to prevent those with means to produce and purchase network advertising from having undue influence on 'controversial issues of public importance,' " the network said this week.
Sounds fair, doesn't it? But what it really means is that if McDonald's buys an ad promoting its tasty Big Mac, no one can run an ad that says Big Macs are full of fat and unhealthful. Pfizer can run a spot saying it's "helping people in need" get medicine, but we can't air an ad saying that Pfizer lobbied to weaken the new Medicare bill to prop up drug prices. Halliburton has slick ads that stress its role supporting the troops in Iraq. But CBS would reject an ad that pointed to Halliburton's profiteering.
The fewer issue ads run, the more time there is for ads with mud-wrestling women selling beer and leggy models peddling fast cars. CBS execs think Americans love mindless consumerism more than anything else and that it's their duty to pander to this.
But with "fairness" doctrines no longer governing the airwaves and the media more concentrated each day, it's getting harder and harder to engage regular people in political discourse. Even the town square has been replaced, in most communities, by private malls, where politics is not encouraged.
Instead of taking every opportunity to promote civic discussion, commercial broadcasters like CBS shrink away. The airwaves are, more than ever, private enterprises. And for that we pay a price: As public political speech becomes more difficult and infrequent, the public becomes less engaged in the policies, processes and laws that govern us.
"Controversy" isn't the real problem. Network front offices love it when one group or another protests sexy babes in bikinis peddling beer brands, or violent video games in which the highest body count wins. That builds buzz.
The CBS policy represents the triumph of corporate self-interest over the public interest. This is the same CBS, after all, that yanked the Ronald Reagan miniseries recently when Republican bigwigs complained. As Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) noted this week, "These are the same executives at CBS who successfully lobbied this Cong
They won't run PETA's ad either (Score:4, Interesting)
Now watch this post get marked down as a troll because somebody with mod points eats meat, and thinks information like this shouldn't receive attention.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not all... (Score:5, Interesting)
The Falcon's compound is also used for coporate meeting and classes. I was their for one. During my lunch break I went outside to get some fresh air and eat. I happend to be looking at the Falcons standing around talking - it was about fifty yards away, no fences or anything else to obstruct my view - when a police cruiser pulls up. The cop then told me that there's no looking. I responded with something along the lines of, if it's that important to be secret, why don't they put a fence up? The cop told me that it's "NFL RULES." and I have to move along. He says he has to tell people who are on McDonald's property the same thing.
So, I guess NFL's rules supercede our civil rights.
Re:Copyright and Trademark Laws (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hey, if we're talking about CBS... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not true, they air such ads all the time when they come from the Democrats and/or the Republicans.
Basically, they're too controversial and the networks don't want to show anything that might make people want to change the channel.
And ads for three different drugs that induce erections aren't?
Yup, sucks...
Yes, it does. Hence my pointing it out.
but that's the way things work.
Or to put it another way, we live in a totalitarian state.
And this has nothing to do with the first amendment, CBS is a corporation, the first amendment only applies to the government.
A very simplistic reading of the situation. Those our are airwaves. The very fact that the networks can be given exclusive access to those airwaves on the one hand and then be allowed to suppress speech is de facto government censorship.
Equal Time Rule (Score:2, Interesting)
This is an overly simplistic statement. The electromagnetic spectrum is a public resource. It is thus subject to less First Amendment protection than other mediums and subject to more government regulation.
There are First Amendment considerations at issue, such as the Equal Time Rule [museum.tv], which in essence, "a station which sells or gives one minute to Candidate A must sell or give the same amount of time with the same audience potential to all other candidates for the particular office."
Thus, if CBS runs an ad for one candidate, they must offer the same time to other candidates. I don't know how this would affect running a purely "anti-candidate" ad which positively endorses no specific candidate. But it might give rise to the right of the "anti-candidate" to give a rebuttal.
Re:NFL = No Fun League (Score:2, Interesting)
The really interesting part of this is going to be when they flex their muscles enough that news outlets notice and get annoyed. The whole "accounts of the game" thing in their copyright notice ignores the fact that the sports industry currently gets a giant advertising section in every newspaper and TV news show in the country called "The Sports Section."
If that goes away due to legal squabbling, they're in a world of hurt. Of course, a single paper cancelling the sports section is going to lose out, but a world where the Tribune has Football and Hockey and the Gazette has Basketball and Baseball is going to have to deal with enraged fans the likes of which you haven't begun to see.
Re:Don't forget the ad CBS is refusing to air. (Score:2, Interesting)
Would it be alright if CBS accepted ads from the Ku Kux Klan but not the NAACP (or vice versa)? Since they have accepted advertising from partisan organizations in the past (such as election advertising this year), they are being hypocrites by refusing this one.