Update, 5 p.m. PT: Deadspin’s account has been reinstated.
Twitter suspended accounts used by both Deadspin and SBNation today over what appears to be a sports-related copyright violation.
Both accounts were inaccessible late Monday afternoon. Politico reporter Peter Sterne tweeted that the NFL sent multiple copyright takedown requests to Twitter related to GIFs of NFL highlights.
Per @Terr (who runs the @deadspin account), the NFL sent Twitter 18 DMCA takedown notices related to Deadspin posting NFL highlights GIFs.
— Peter Sterne (@petersterne) October 12, 2015
Lacey Donohue, executive managing editor for Gawker Media (which owns Deadspin), noted that it “looks like it’s the NFL” in reference to a message from Twitter.
RE: @Deadspin: per the notice from Twitter, it looks like it's the NFL.
— Lacey Donohue (@laceydonohue) October 12, 2015
And here’s a tweet sent at 4:14 p.m. PT from Deadspin columnist Drew Magary:
https://twitter.com/drewmagary/status/653710337313738752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Both Deadspin and Vox-owned SBNation, particularly via its SBNationGIF account, tweet out GIFs of content taken from sports broadcasts — content that leagues like the NFL, MLB, NBA, and others own.
This past July, a Twitter user had his account suspended due to a DMCA complaint Twitter received from the technology arm of Major League Baseball. SBNation received similar suspension notices from Twitter last year after posting World Cup videos on the Twitter-owned Vine platform.
In its terms of service, Twitter notes that it will “will respond to reports of alleged copyright infringement, such as allegations concerning the unauthorized use of a copyrighted image as a profile photo, header photo, or background, allegations concerning the unauthorized use of a copyrighted video or image uploaded through our media hosting services, or Tweets containing links to allegedly infringing materials.”
It’s worth noting that the NFL expanded its partnership with Twitter in August in order to provide more NFL-related content on Twitter.
It will be interesting to see how Twitter handles these types of DMCA requests going forward, particularly as Twitter pushes to become a primary destination for news. Topics like censorship and Internet freedom also come to mind, as does the definition of “fair use” by publishers.
On the other side, it’s clear that the sports leagues want to control how their content is distributed. As a sports fan, though, seeing GIFs and following accounts like @SBNationGIF help me stay up-to-date and interested in what’s going on.
NFL and MLB should be pleased to have GIFs of their games shared by major media accounts on Twitter, no? it's attention for their product.
— Daniel Roberts (@readDanwrite) October 12, 2015
Seriously — suspending Twitter accounts b/c they post sports GIFs doesn’t make more people go to NFL games It makes us all hate the NFL more
— Christina Warren (@film_girl) October 12, 2015
You could argue the use of GIFs, Vines & highlight clips on social have been HUGE in getting millennials interested in MLB.
— Brian J. Manzullo (@BrianManzullo) October 12, 2015
We’ve reached out to Twitter and will update if we hear back.
Update: Twitter said that it does not comment on individual accounts, but pointed us to two DMCA notices related to NFL videos sent to unspecified publishers.
“We submit all actioned takedown notices to the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, and these batches should be posted later tonight or tomorrow,” a Twitter spokesperson noted.
