Deadspin, The Packers, And The Internet » Brats & Beer

I came across a whole post about the Packers today on Deadspin. Were they passing along condolences to Brett and Deanna Favre on the passing of her stepfather? Maybe taking general manager Ted Thompson to task for our lack of depth at running back now that Vernand Morency looks to be out two weeks with a knee injury? Or was it a hilarious send up of Johnny “Bowl full of jelly” Jolly and Ryan “2-Slow” Pickett for failing their physicals? No.

No, today Deadspin posted on, of all things, the copyright and terms of service notice on the packers.com Web site. It seems the Packer Backers Blog came across some language in the TOS that seeks to restrict links from other sites to any page other than the home page of the Packers Web site. The actual legalese states:

Other sites may link without prior permission to the home page of the Green Bay Packers, www.packers.com, (the “Service”) only through a plain-text link. Permission must otherwise be granted by us in writing for any other type of link to the Service and/or copyright content owned by the Green Bay Packers.

Anyway, there’s much hilarity and ribald fun made of the Packers and the state of Wisconsin for their apparent lack of Internet savvy.

But as it turns out, this same language can be found on almost any commercial Web site, including the site for the Philadelphia Eagles, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and even the New Yawk Jets. (But I thought they were hip and savvy with the Internet tubes in New Yawk City?)

Is it silly and ridiculous and overly litigious? Yes. Are any of these teams going to file lawsuits against bloggers and fans for linking to features on their sites? No, unless you try to pass off your site as the official Jets site — and I seriously can’t think of a reason anyone would do that.

So anyway, we’ve had our fun at the expense of the good people in Wisconsin who make the beer and the cheese and the sausage, but let’s not get our panties all in a bunch over it.

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