Funny copyright notice on Japanese TV (sound yes, but image? No!)
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.]Link.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!
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.
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It's probably something akin to the local blackout for sports events here in the USA. Not exactly sure how that works out when spanning the Pacific, though.
Its more likely that NHK only has the broadcasting rights for J.League within Japan. This would be more akin to how you have to watch Premiership matches on Fox (in the US)instead of Sky even if you somehow managed to get Sky on satellite.
The audio is probably covered under a different license - or it may be that NHK has sublicensed audio broadcasting rights from the rights holders for the purpose of having something to broadcast in their international coverage areas.
I had the same thing happen to me once while watching NHK in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay (I couldn't believe the hotel had it). I think Peregrine hit it right on the money. I've never seen this happen in Japan.
Ha, Fox Sports Latin America often has the same issues. Here, they broadcast the crowd in the stadium, and they only narrate the match.
That's a photo of teenage golf sensation Ryo Ishikawa, the "Shy Prince," as he's been dubbed, who won a professional event this past summer in Japan. So it's likely NHK chose not to pay what the commercial channel was asking for.