NFL limits Web

Football fans who turn to newspaper websites for the latest on the New England Patriots, beware: The NFL has restricted how much you can see and hear.

In a high-stakes struggle for control of NFL news in cyberspace, the league has prohibited news organizations from airing more than a total of 45 seconds per day of online audio or video of team personnel from its stadiums. The action could foreshadow other major sports leagues imposing similar restrictions.

The NFL wants to prevent news organizations from diminishing the potential value of its online properties: NFL.com and all 32 team websites.

"This is important to people who want access to multiple sources of information and want to hear independent voices with a range of insights rather than just the official reports of the team or the league," said Wendy Seltzer, a visiting professor at Northeastern University School of Law and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

"The public benefits from a richer stream of information. Maybe we, as a public, should demand greater access."

The restrictions were part of a media policy recommended by the NFL's broadcast and digital media committees. Patriots chairman Robert Kraft sits on the broadcast committee, while his son, Jonathan, the team's president, sits on the digital media panel.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said the 45-second rule reflects the league's attempt to balance the needs of news outlets with the league's need to protect its media assets. The policy also requires news sites to remove NFL audio and video from their websites after 24 hours of usage.

In addition, news websites that use audio or video from NFL facilities must provide links to NFL.com and that team's Web page. News sites also are barred from running advertisements alongside the NFL content.

"The Internet is a new medium with potential revenue sources," Aiello said. "We want to carefully manage our audio and video property."

The NFL is also "a media company," Aiello said, and the musings of its players, coaches, and owners are the league's intellectual property. He said the policy is aimed at preventing a Boston newspaper, for example, from undermining the NFL's revenue opportunities by using extensive audio and video to produce a commercially sponsored Patriots show on the Web.

"News sites are looking at the [NFL] video as a business opportunity," Aiello said. "I don't believe it's about news coverage."

To the contrary, newspaper editors said, it's about producing the best possible multimedia reports.

"For the consumer and the news organization, you want your Internet sites to be as robust and realistic as possible, and you need video as well as printed matter to accomplish that," said Jim Jenks, executive sports editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. "It puts the consumer a whole lot closer to the story."

Jenks, whose term as president of the Associated Press Sports Editors ended this year, is working with editors and newspaper lawyers to try to persuade the NFL to relax the restrictions.

"But I don't expect we're going to see any change before the regular season begins," he said.

The Patriots included the policy in their 1,227-word application for media credentials this season. The Globe advised its staff not to sign the application while the paper considers the new regulations. (The Patriots have continued to grant the paper access to the team.)

"We are adhering to the 45-second video limitation on our site," the Globe's editor, Martin Baron, said. "Standard practice is for our lawyers to review contracts before staff are permitted to sign, and the lawyers are doing that now."

Jenks said he has advised newspapers that disagree with the policy -- "Everybody is saying the time limit is way too short," he said -- either not to sign the applications or to sign them after redacting the section containing the 45-second rule.

In the past, the NFL allowed news sites to use a "reasonable" amount of audio and video of team personnel at its facilities, except on game days, when no audio or video could be used. The new 45-second limit also applies to news conferences, which irks many editors.

"We are equal partners in those podium settings," Jenks said. "They wouldn't be holding them if they didn't have our reporters sitting in front of them asking questions."

Regardless, the news conferences remain NFL property, Aiello said.

"News sites can write anything they want about the press conferences and run a full transcript of them and use any important sound bites," he said. "Most of what is interesting in a press conference can be captured in a very brief sound bite anyway."

Aiello said some of the new regulations will improve the news industry's access to information. One policy, for example, requires head coaches to make their assistants available to reporters, which Patriots coach Bill Belichick previously did not do.

But the 45-second rule particularly rankles football writers who have developed multimedia platforms, including John McClain, a past president of the Professional Football Writers of America who covers the Houston Texans for the Houston Chronicle.

"This is the first time I have seen the NFL turn its back on publicity, ever," he said in an interview. "I understand they want to drive fans to their own [NFL-based] websites, but their websites can't do what we do. Do you think fans are going to get the same coverage on Boston.com that they get on Patriots.com? Of course not."

McClain has circumvented the rule by asking players, coaches, and executives to meet him away from team property for interviews (the 45-second rule only applies to audio or video recorded at team facilities). The Texans, however, are more likely than well-established teams to accommodate such requests.

"Do you think Belichick will let you come by his house and set up an interview?" McClain said. "I don't think so."

Even though many NFL stadiums are publicly financed, the NFL appears to be acting within its legal rights in imposing the 45-second restrictions, according to Seltzer, who specializes in intellectual property and Internet law. But she said she found the policy otherwise hard to defend.

"It concerns me when people hold a public event," she said, "and then try to close off access to information about it."

Bob Hohler can be reached at hohler@globe.com.