YouTube, copyright and the man who ‘discovered’ Michael Jordan

Picture via Google Images

In Matt Lynch's spectacular piece about the litigious relationship between professional sports companies and YouTube, "What's mine isn't yours: sports, copyright and YouTube" we meet Han Lee, the man who "discovered" Michael Jordan...and whose rabid enthusiasm for the hoops legend is now giving the NBA a headache.

Lynch reports:

Lee, 34, is a self-described lifelong basketball fanatic who grew up (and remains) a New York Knicks fan. One day in 1982, however, Lee saw a college game on television featuring the North Carolina Tarheels and a young Jordan.

"I just remember noticing there was something different about him," Lee said. "I just kept my eye on him and every single time he was on TV I made sure to record it."

And record he did. Lee now boasts a collection that he estimates contains between 400 and 600 Jordan games, including every 50-point performance except his first one (several of Lee's tapes were tragically recorded over by his mother while Lee was at college).

For a long time, the viewing audience for Lee's collection remained constrained to himself and a group of basketball aficionado friends. But about a year ago Lee, a film major in college, found a path to a wider audience for his lifelong labor. Under the appropriate name "hoopsencyclopedia," Lee began editing together highlight reels of Jordan games and posting them on YouTube.

Lynch goes on to detail the NBA's response to Lee and others like him who have been posting highlight compilations on YouTube. The gist: The NBA's not happy about it. However Lee tells Lynch that only 1 of his 47 videos have been taken down by YouTube so far, Lee believes because it was featured on digg.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/v/66gXIo9ZfJo[/video]

Jordan drops 50 on the '88 Celtics, a Han Lee highlight video on YouTube

Lynch also explores a lawsuit filed by the English Premier League against YouTube for copyright infringement. Unlike most lawsuits in this vein, the Premiere League lawyer says his client isn't just looking to leverage a partnership agreement but instead wants to be compensated for perceived copyright violations. They've filed a class action lawsuit and started a Web site, www.youtubeclassaction.com to encourage others to sign on.

What do you think? Should the NBA and Premier League clamp down on people like Lee who are posting highlight compilations on YouTube? Is the Premier League actually going to prevail? Does YouTube really have a leg to stand on in this discussion?

Here's what Lee said to Lynch:

"Ultimately I'm helping the NBA," he said. "I think sports are a weird area of copyright law. It's not like TV or movie content that's written by writers. That's basically art. Sports are something someone did. They're historical."

Are sports "history," and therefore open to republication and remixing like Lee and others are doing? Or are they the intellectual property of the companies organizing the events?

Thoughts?