Nieman Foundation at Harvard
Early Saturday morning, @ReplayLastGoal tweeted a screenshot of an email from Twitter informing Xavier Damman, the account’s creator, that FIFA had filed a request asking Twitter to remove the account for copyright violation.
FIFA just sent a takedown notice to Twitter as well to remove this account. #fairuse pic.twitter.com/9iStuf5Na1
— ReplayLastGoal (@ReplayLastGoal) June 28, 2014
Its Facebook page has also been removed.
All of @ReplayLastGoal’s tweets from before the takedown notice have been removed — but the account keeps tweeting out new goals. Damman is also a cofounder of Storify, so he appropriately created a Storify of Twitter users urging FIFA to allow @ReplayLastGoal to continue.
@ReplayLastGoal isn’t the only account having problems with World Cup copyright violations. SB Nation has had two Vine accounts that showcased six-second videos of World Cup goals deleted, The Wall Street Journal reported. ESPN and Univision, which own the broadcast rights to the Cup in the United States, have been vigilant in trying to eradicate unofficial World Cup videos and GIFs, the Journal reported. Slate, for instance, created a video showcasing the first 136 goals of the World Cup.
It was promptly removed.
