The editor of UK newspaper the Sun, David Dinsmore, has called on social media platform Twitter to crack down on the illegal posting of sports content.
News UK, the publisher of the Sun, the UK’s best-selling newspaper, has the exclusive digital rights to highlights of the Premier League, English football’s top division, in a three-year deal from 2013-14 to 2015-16.
However, Dinsmore believes that such deals are undermined by social media websites that allow members to upload clips via applications such as Vine.
“Rights protection is a massive issue, not just for rights-holders but rights-owners as well,” Dinsmore said. “It is definitely something that Twitter is going to have to step up to the plate on. If you look at YouTube now, the takedown tools [for illegal clips] are pretty efficient. Software sees the image and down it comes.”
He added: “Vine is an issue but I think that there are big steps forward being taken. A lot of the sort of app-based offerings [of illegal content] that were out there 18 months ago are no longer here because they have been sanctioned. It is a battle we all have to deal with.”
In its Transparency Report in July 2014, Twitter said that it had received 9,199 requests, 34% more than the same time a year earlier, to take down content on Twitter and short-form video sharing service Vine from rights-holders claiming copyright breaches in the four months through to June 2014.