The lights are on
Last year the NCAA sued EA for using players' likenesses in their college football games. Since then, an EA Sports developer admitted in court that the team did use actual player stats to design the game, though without explicitly naming the student athletes. Today, we have news that NCAA was at one point debating allowing game developers full access to student data, including names and faces.
The news comes via unsealed documents from the Ed O'Bannon v. NCAA lawsuit, a case in which a former UCLA student sued the defendants for using his likeness without his consent or compensation. The correspondence summary details NCAA members' debate over what could be considered exploitation of students. It also points to a Sports Illustrated bonus DVD that uses NCAA content despite going against established rules implemented to protect students. In essence, the NCAA's acknowledgment that Sports Illustrated gets away with this year after year might be considered selective policing of the rules.
EA Sports settled with O'Bannon for $40 million, but litigation with NCAA and O'Bannon continues. In the following months, the NCAA turned their sights on EA Sports with their own lawsuit alleging the developer as the truly guilty party.
[Source: Deadspin]
Our TakeEA Sports had an uphill climb ahead of it in the court room, but this new information could hurt the NCAA's case against the game developer. Hopefully more revealing information will become known throughout litigation so the court can confidently decide whether both parties are truly to blame here.
Damn, I was really looking forward to NCAA Football 15 on my PS4. No more...
So the NCAA gets to push the cost of building new stadiums and the cost of educating, training, housing, transporting, and feeding their performers onto the entire student population (in the form of increased tuition costs) and thus the tax payer (who pays for student loans), and makes millions upon millions of dollars, yet cannot compensate their performers any better than a Minor League team?
And on top of that, is fully willing to exploit their performers personal data?
Disgusting.