The BCCI today came out with the so-called media rules for journalists (and presumably bloggers). The rules are so ridiculously absurd, that if it were announced a couple days earlier, people would have thought its an april fool’s joke. The BCCI says that media folks who take pictures at the games will not be allowed to use them anywhere without the BCCI’s explicit written permission. So let me get this straight. The photographer brings his camera, goes to the match, clicks a bunch of pictures, and then needs to ASK THE BCCI to publish them online?!?
But wait, it gets worse. The photographers are going to HAVE TO upload ALL the pictures they’ve taken to the IPL website in under 24 hours. If they fail to do so, they will not be allowed into subsequent matches?!? How stupid is that?
The IPL can’t keep an updated website, and they want me to believe that they’re going to be able to handle thousands of 6-7 MB image files being uploaded simultaneously?Photographers take anywhere from 100-500 images per match,and that means the IPL website will support 900-1000 GB of upload everyday? Ha! Don’t make me laugh. I’m willing to bet a thousand bucks that their website will crash on day 1.
But why is the BCCI being so stupid about this? How are online news editions like cricinfo and bloggers like us going to report on the matches if they’re not allowed to use the images? And what’s BCCI’s problem anyway? Why do they want so much control on everything? I can’t even imagine how these images can be “abused” as the BCCI is claiming. If the BCCI is going to go about suing bloggers and online media content providers, how are we going to keep up the IPL hype that they’ve created?
