STAR India has sent out notices to mobile application developers, telling them not to use live cricket scores, ball by ball updates, the match scorecard, audio commentary or match footage, MediaNama has learned from application developers. Multiple app developers who have received these notices have shared a copy of the notice with us. At the time of writing this post, Lalit Bhagia, VP & Head-Digital (Internet & Mobile) at Star TV, named in the notice, has asked us to contact STAR corp-com, and we're awaiting a response. This is not the first instance of a rights holder backed by the BCCI demanding that companies not monetize reportage of scores or Cricket related updates. vRock Mobile, which has the IPL rights for SMS, MMS and IVR has done the same in the past. More on that here and here. Our Take - Beyond App Developers: Note that we've only heard from app developers, the notice below also attempts to restrict usage of Cricket scores and commentary by any third party, which means that it is apparently applicable to major Cricket sites like Cricinfo and Cricbuzz, as well as all major news publications online. This notice is more likely to be adhered to by small app developers than by larger outfits, because the legality of this is not very clear. - Hot News & Impact on reportage: This is what is known as the 'Hot News' concept, and if this goes to court, it will impact news journalism - can an entity…
