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

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? Permalink | Comments | Email This Story ...

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Ny mets rickrolled... but mlb uses dmca to shut down the fun (Abstract text format)

NY Mets Rickrolled... But MLB Uses DMCA To Shut Down The Fun | Techdirt Techdirt About Contact Us Your Preferences Main Submit a Story Advertise << California Lawmaker Wants To Change Law To Tax iTunes; Pretending Infinite Goods Are Tangible | Stephen King Slams Attempt To Ban Violent Videogames >> Too Much Free Time by Mike Masnick Wed, Apr 9th 2008 5:03am Share This Filed Under: copyright, dmca, ny mets, rickroll Permalink. NY Mets Rickrolled... But MLB Uses DMCA To Shut Down The Fun from the never-gonna-give-you-up... dept 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? 26 Comments | Leave a Comment.. Reader Comments (rss) (Flattened / Threaded) "saved by others" link by impiri - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 5:56am Uh, you might want to fix the "saved by others" link. (Very NSFW) (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) Intellectual Property, Hot Dogs, and American Pie by eleete - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 6:04am 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 (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) by Anonymous Coward - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 6:13am Damn it, fix your "saved by others" link you a$$holes. I thought I could trust Techdirt at work, guess not. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) by Anonymous Coward - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 6:30am Seriously, that "saved by others" link is NSFW, don't click it! (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) by Anonymous Coward - Apr 9th, 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 :( (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) Re: by STFU - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 6:54am 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. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) fix the damn link by Michael Kine - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 6:59am 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? (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) by Anonymous Coward - Apr 9th, 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. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) fix the link please! by Johnny B Good - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 7:13am Please fix the NSFW link. I went nuts after clicking that link in my rss reader. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) by Hoeppner - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 7:15am People actually watch baseball? Just joking it would actually be amusing to go to a ballpark a time or two, maybe. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) Saw it by James - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 7:18am 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 (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) No MLB for me this year... by Ruck Doll - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 7:22am 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 (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) by Anonymous Coward - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 7:23am Yeah, this should NOT be any links that are unsafe for work in this. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) by Anonymous Coward - Apr 9th, 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. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) heh... by Adam - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 7:42am i helped rickroll the mets, sucks the MLB has absolutely zero sense of humor! (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) nice pron link by Darren - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 7:55am good story, but was ruined by the porn link. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) by Sea Man - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 8:41am Here's an idea. Get back to work and quit crying about the NSFW banner ads. Pussies. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) Re: "saved by others" link by Mike - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 8:48am 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. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) Re: fix the damn link by Mike - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 8:51am 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. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) all you NSFW bandwagon jumpers by anonymous coward - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 8:55am Oh shutup, get back to work and stop browsing the WWW then (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) I missed the link by Chronno S. Trigger - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 8:56am 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. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) Re: I missed the link by Mike - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 9:34am 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. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) by Bill Magilicutty - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 10:03am Dam first thing i did when someone said NSFW was to go look for the link myself, Im a perv. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) Re: Intellectual Property, Hot Dogs, and American Pie by EVIL_BASTARD - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 10:13am 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. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) Re: Intellectual Property, Hot Dogs, and American Pie by Anonymous Coward - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 10:28am @ 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. (reply to this comment) (link to this comment) @ 25. Anon by Rose M. Welch - Apr 9th, 2008 @ 12:01pm 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. 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