Sports & Blogging in a Surveillance Society

Louisville's Courier Journal is thinking of suing the NCAA for ejecting their blogger from a University of Louisville-Oklahoma State baseball game. What it comes down to, I suppose, is whether a blog is viewed by the courts as a sort of live telecast akin to TV or Radio, or a sort of reportage, like phoning in the scores to a news agency. But whatever the outcome of the lawsuit, it's inevitable that bloggers will continue to blog from sporting events, and a decision against them will probably just make certain bloggers more determined as they try to get away with it. What is the NCAA going to do, ban all hand-held computerized devices, even cell phones?

I suppose the next advance will be live guerilla web-casts from sporting events. Camera technology is improving literally as I write this, and before long there will be little difference in picture quality between a broadcast network and a web-cast filmed from a pin-phone camera in some guy's Yankee cap. That's what the NCAA is really worried about, as well they should be.

But I say turnabout is fair play. They film our every movement at many of these sporting events, with cameras hidden, and not so hidden, in every nook and cranny. In fact, it's getting so our privacy is invaded anytime we step out our doors into a public or corporate space. Making our own videos and web casts is shaping up to be a very effective way to fight back against the powers that be.

There are two reasons that the NCAA doesn't like the new media. The first is obvious: money. But the second, no less important, is because they fear they can't control the image of the game. They want the game to be viewed only through their corporate lens. But I for one would welcome a telecast of a sporting event without the inane banter of the stuffed shirts they employ to translate the actions for us.

Read more from Ed Hamilton at www.hotelchelseablog.com