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A comment on U.S. judge rejects World Chess bid to block websites from airing moves. Parent comment

Re:U.S. judge rejects World Chess bid to block websites from... by gnicholas on Friday November 11, 2016 @07:39PM (#12935816)
When I watch MLB games streamed from mlb.tv, there is a warning at the end that says you may not reproduce or transmit the game or descriptions thereof (or something like that). I don't remember the exact language, but I do remember being struck by the fact that it extended beyond the game itself.

I would imagine that the websites that give play-by-play info may have paid for the right to publish information about the game, or they may be able to just watch it on TV (or live) and update their info that way. As another commenter noted, the organizers could have set up the competition to forbid the audience from disseminating info, but they didn't for whatever reason.

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Re:U.S. judge rejects World Chess bid to block websites from... by ChicagoBoy11 on Friday November 11, 2016 @08:01PM (#12935920)
You are correct, but there is also a distinction between the posturing of sports giants like the MLB and the NFL and what would actually hold up in court in a possible legal challenge. My media law professor seemed pretty sure that, in a vast majority of these cases, those "prohibitions" would not hold up.
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Re:U.S. judge rejects World Chess bid to block websites from... by gnicholas on Friday November 11, 2016 @08:22PM (#12935987)
I'd be curious to know why they wouldn't hold up—did your professor give a reason or mention any particular cases that led him/her to reach this conclusion?

In my experience (lawyer in Palo Alto for 7 years), parties can agree by contract to do or not do many many things. Even provisions that limit legal recourse, like the much-decried mandatory arbitration clauses [1] have held up all the way to the US Supreme Court. I would be very interested to know what legal basis there would be to invalidate a license agreement that says: you can have access to this content but only if you promise not to tell other people about it.

1: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitrat...

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Re:U.S. judge rejects World Chess bid to block websites from... by greglindahl on Friday November 11, 2016 @08:44PM (#12936071)
"parties can agree", but I turned on my TV after the legalese was broadcast. The average website or software shrinkwrap has a lot better contract formation than that.
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Re:U.S. judge rejects World Chess bid to block websites from... by matt4077 on Saturday November 12, 2016 @05:05AM (#12937267)
That seems like a cop-out avoiding the issue. If you did see it, what's the argument for it to be unenforceable? Note that it should be unenforceable, but it's a hard case to make without a certain amount of "I know it when I see it".

And "there are no limits to the content of contracts people freely enter" is obviously an untenable position – we'd all agree that a provision giving me your kidneys, hidden somewhere deep in the ToS is unenforceable.

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Re:U.S. judge rejects World Chess bid to block websites from... by gnicholas on Friday November 11, 2016 @10:15PM (#12936405)
Yeah, interestingly they show it at the end (I'm sure there's a reason, but of course you could have turned it off before that pops up). It's probably also in the mlb.tv subscription agreement, which again doesn't make it necessarily enforceable, but if they also show it during the broadcast it makes it a bit more likely to be enforced than if it's just one of a thousand things in the clickwrap.
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Re:U.S. judge rejects World Chess bid to block websites from... by alasdair_ on Friday November 11, 2016 @08:04PM (#12935929)
They can claim these things but I am not certain such things will hold up in court.
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