The deal that has been announced today between the Formula One group and Tata could end up transforming the way in which Formula 1 fans around the world view the sport. The gist of the story is that Tata has impressive capability to shift data around the world, using fixed line systems, which are part of something called the Tata Global Network (TGN). This links up the new TGN-Intra Asia Cable, a 6,700km multi-terabit cable system that connects Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan, with the existing TGN-TIC and TGN-Pacific systems. There are also regional systems such as TGN-Atlantic, TGN-Northern Europe, TGN-Western Europe, and the TGN-Eurasia, in addition other networks which Tata part-owns. These ring the world and make it possible for eventual global high-quality connectivity, although there is still much to be done at local level where fibre-optic cables have yet to be installed and systems rely on the old copper wires that were used in telephone networks.
The TGN works at 1 terabyte per second (which means one trillion bytes a second). This is impressive but such is the rate of development at the moment that researchers at the National Institute of Information and Communications in Tokyo achieved a transfer rate of 13 terabytes per second, using a seven-core fibre optic cable.
In principle, however, the new deal means that rather than bouncing signals off expensive satellites, Formula One Management can one day deliver its TV feeds into homes all over the world. That in turn means that the sport can end its reliance on TV companies, which pay for the right to broadcast the sport and replace them with direct access to the consumer. This means that there is no longer any real need for middle men, who get back their investment in the rights by selling advertising. In future the Formula One group could do that itself, either by using traditional advertising breaks and on-screen signage, or by having coverage in each national market being sold to a sponsor. Thus there could be free-to-air coverage of F1 without advertising breaks with “Formula One, brought to you by Dunkin Donuts” style advertising. There is no doubt that in some places this would probably translate to pay-per-view access but that is never very popular with sponsors that want mass market exposure for the branding that they have on cars and drivers. Each regional market can be controlled, much as TV channels now do, stopping Internet users seeing their content, unless the viewer is in the right place.
It also means that there can be multiple feeds, which allows for pay-per-view access for more detailed information for passionate F1 fans and, in theory, it allows for inter-activity, such as viewers being able to select the cameras that they wish to see and, of course, access to the same kind of data that everyone has at the race tracks.
It also means that Formula One Management can save money as it will no longer have to send its now-ageing Broadcast Centre from race to race, which means not only a substantial saving in transportation costs, but also a calendar that can be packaged more cost-effectively than is currently the case, particularly if circuits are permanently wired and all that needs to happen is that the cameras are put in place. The editing of the programming can be done at a permanent facility in England (or wherever).
Bernie Ecclestone says that free-to-air TV in sport is doomed as the business is changing and media organisations cannot generate the same kinds of revenues as the pay-per-view services. But while Formula One looks ahead to a time when it can sell fans programming on http://www.formula1.com, there is more than a little irony in that it does not own the http://www.formulaone.com domain name. Trademarking was rather hit and miss back in the days when it did not much matter and so the expression Formula 1 (using the number) is not trademarked, the ™ which is forever being applied means only that a trademark has been applied for. The World Intellectual Property Organisation has rejected arguments that Formula One owns the expression “Formula 1”.
The http://www.formulaone.com domain is owned a company in the United States that sells thin films to protect windscreens. This in turn is owned by the chemical company which in recent days has been swallowed up by industry giant Eastman Chemical in a $3.4 billion deal. The new management might be willing to do a deal with Ecclestone and his people, but that would likely be a rather expensive arrangement and Mr E has never been keen on paying out for such things.
There is still some potential for the Formula One group to secure http://www.grandprix.com, which is privately owned. At this point I have to admit that I am in favour of all this Internet-connectivity for grand prix racing, if only because I am a significant shareholder in the company that owns http://www.grandprix.com. If those nice people at CVC Capital Partners wish to lob a few million my way I am sure that we can let them have it.
joeblogsf1 
I think there’s a muddling of bits and bytes — it’s 1 Terabit per second, not Terabyte (eight bits in a byte) and 109 terabits per second for NIIC. Still v fast!
Too complicated for me
It is a sad depiction of these times that your honesty felt genuinely refreshing to me. That is why I love this site.
and most of Tata too, i bet. Try working out the non contended zero jitter line rate at a switch. (or for more fun the actual limit of optical transmission, which is way more fun, as it involves some actual physics) They may just be working at the aggregate of a couple of good new Extreme Networks boxes, off the shelf. Those are on general release now, send a P.O. Add up the specs all the wrong ways! No shame getting it wrong, when everyone else gets it deliberately wrong, Joe!
Careful they don’t come after grandprix.com with eminent domain squealing.
And with the new addressing system they’ll probably just opt for live.formulaone
But interesting all the same. Guess someone got Bernie to look at technology finally.
I guess the internet age means it’s forgotten what that website was called before . . no, not two bites at the cherry! 😉
This is an interesting article in wsj discussing the topic of internet + good old fashioned FTA broadcast might be more relevant model than cable.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204059804577229451364593094.html
I think its a smart move, there are fans who will shell out for interactive content while now they are probably not so happy handing it over to Murdoch.
Yes, but Kitteh, we were promised all that interactive jazz for signing up to online services, dontchya remember? 🙂
I was always told that TM stood for “Totally Meaningless”.
Does that mean Joe, if you sell your domain name to Bernie that you will be travelling in your own Gulfstream to each race instead of entertaining us with your airport joys?
The Bernard is not famous for parting with money.
If he does, any chance that you’ll use that money to secure yourself a drive as a pay-driver? 🙂
His level of fame on that score might change of course, depending on how a certain court case in Germany goes. Allegedly.
Maybe he rushed the deal with Tata because he feels his time may be coming soon, either because of his age or because of jurisdiction.
An interesting and potentially productive arrangement all right.
What then has to happen is that the actual show has to be worth while for viewers to pay per view.
The reality for me is that while it was free to air I watched F1 religiously. Then 2000-2005 I gradually became disenchanted with it and my enjoyment declined but I still watched it even if it meant on some occasions getting up in the middle of the night.
when my local rrangement changed to pay TV I stopped watching live because the cost of the channel to just watch F1 wasn’t worth it to me. There wasn’t enough in it to pull me anymore.
If all I had to pay for was the race and it was reasonably priced then I might go back to watching but F1 is pricing itself out of reach, not on my income (which is substantially adequate), but on value for money.
I don’t pay for products that aren’t good value.
The NBA offers a worldwide coverage of its games via Internet, called the International League Pass Broadband. You can watch games live or on demand, quality is quite good, even on a large TV, you can also watch it on an iOs or an Android device. In case games are also shown on TV, there are blackouts, so the NBA can practically sell rights to TV Stations as well as dealing with customers directly. Advertising is cut out. I guess it is a way to get additional revenue out of countries where the sport is not shown on TV.
Bernie is a Luddite and this is about reducing costs plain and simple. Leave a lot of his TV people at home (no per diem costs, flights etc), don’t upgrade the onsite equipment, but get rid of most of it. When this is done and the inevitable bugs worked out then some bright staff member will go to Bernie with new ideas. If he can make money with them he will do it.
But this is the perfect negotiating tool for TV rights. Take UK, Sky have the rights as soon as BBC is done, no ITV to bid against them, certainly no BBC. So Sky can make a low bid to Bernie and he is stuck with the offer or no UK F1 to which the teams will yell and scream.
Not now, he can offer to stream to any IP address originating in the UK and the internet providers could become a new middle man if he wanted too or he can just do a seasonal charge to each household. Bernie would prefer no doubt to offload the content providing to a middle man as he won’t want the cost to set up a server farm to stream the feeds.
He may never do it, but like another race venue it is a club to use on the existing race venues to cough up the cash. The teams will be in a tough spot, stick to free to air and loose revenue from Bernie or allow him to stream over internet, get more Bernie bucks, but piss off the sponsors – if he goes the internet route. This really is the time for the teams to buy up F1, get more media rights money and provide a better service to the team sponsors.
I always thought that the reason F1 isn’t streamed online was that the contracts with the TV networks didn’t allow it, in fear of losing viewership.
I also think it’s weird that they’re dealing directly with top-level bandwidth providers. This is an extremely complex and costly undertaking, and pretty much EVERYBODY entrusts CDN (content delivery network) providers like Akamai for this sort of thing.
The technology required to deliver high definition video worldwide already exists – look at YouTube.
The problem is entirely a political / financial problem. Until old fuddy-duddies who shun technology are ousted, young people will not be able to consume media the way they want to. Take a look at all the hubbub around the MPAA/RIAA suing people for music piracy for a great example of this.
My Youtube regularly freezes up because bandwidth, and i live in a supposedly high technology country
Get back to yer Minitel terminal, you Not Invented Here lot! 🙂
It’s all the French bits and bytes going on strike, Joe. But you’re right, the local networks often arent fast enough for everyone to be streaming HD content simultaneously.
Senator Ted Stevens: It’s a series of tubes.
France Telecom: Ceci n’est pas une pipe
fnar fnar . .
There’s a big difference between being able to deliver HD video and being able to deliver HD video in a timely manner. I can watch a low quality video stream without too much trouble but once you start trying to view medium to high quality, trouble ensues – and it’s not just bandwidth at transport but also server capability at the sending end.
Spoken like a true Australian sufferer of telecoms “services”!
(do not get me started on our lot over there wondering why “our” skype video thing is useless to see my mom for a natter. Not my patch, mate!)
We’ve had the advantage of throwing out all our infrastructure kit a few times, to finally get what was the better idea at the start (no profit in not upgrading, eh) just to spite our savers and pensioners. Incidentally, which way do your quantum bits actually spin??!
Your batsmen regularly ask a similar question…
Bodyline! 🙂
I guess most folks arent geeky enough to look into the details, but it is highly amusing to see formula1.com today displaying its “Official Web Hosting and Content Delivery Network Provider” logo when they are in fact still using rival services.
Time will tell if there is anything more to this than the sponsorship they previously paid to teams now going directly to Bernie/CVC.
This sort of thing happens all the time though.
Athletes drinking proper electrolyte laden sports drinks from Coca-Cola or Red Bull drinks bottles; drummers putting a Yamaha or Tama logo-emblazoned skin on the front of a DW bass drum (a seasoned eye can see from the lugs around the front hoop) and this sort of thing.
It’ll take some time for the real employees to make the handover that the marketing and legal people have just signed, but they probably will use TATA stuff eventually, there’s not too much reason not to.
Brought To You By Edison, Faraday, bloke who found copper, Postel, Perlman . . (run credits)
wouldn’t it be lovely to screen the whole list? Take a few days, though.
Does TATA make anything in networks? Don’t think so.
Apparently Tata are going to be setting up connectivity at all the GPs for media. Race organisers at Hungaroring and Sao Paulo distraught at loss of internet connection fees!
This may make Joe a happy man.
I doubt the domain is worth much if you can’t prove the net income earned merits your asking price
I tend to agree with you, but real estate is real estate. Virtual or otherwise. As they say in the real estate business: it’s all about location, location, location.
Also the loss F1 has by visiters going to grandprix and not getting to F1, less and less and people use search engines.
First response: welcome to the 21st century, F1.
Second response: nothing in here for the North American market.
Third response: I was really disappointed to spend a season trying to watch the ALMS on my computer. I hope that’s not the future. I’d prefer not to have to invest in new technology to watch a race.
Before, when we were discussing the possibilities presented by digital media, Karen told us that we simply “don’t understand” that current contracts require archaic arrangements.
If this more recent news is indeed a hint that FOM is looking ahead re: digital opportunities, that’s likely a good thing… assuming there’s more to it than Bernie just selling logo space.
If it was anybody but FOM, I would be optimistic. Too bad we have ample reason to believe this is motivated by something other than a commitment to finding ways to better serve F1 fans while making a profit.
Joe, I think you should do a quick and dirty IPO before finally selling to Bernie/CVC. I’m sure everyone here will buy shares. 😉
“Stopping internet users seeing theory content”…I may be taking this out of context (please clarify if I am) but it debt sound very forward thinking to me.
F1’s biggest crime is not taking full advantage of the internet (like yourself who’s profile has rightfully risen) and instead has chosen to treat avid fans as criminals for wanting to watch vintage f1 on the likes of youtube.
To suggest Bernie would avoid the pay tv route us ludicrous. In the markets that matter terrestrial tv companies simply cart compete with pay per view for premiums, and as long as F1 is a stock listed company (and owned by whoever…bankers in suits or racing teams) they’ll always pick who pays top dollar!
Pessimistic, yes…true? Regrettably so!
Joe, does this mean that the tech is cheaper than the existing communication systems or a better service?
Joe,
With the Tata group getting closely associated with F1, could they in the future buy the Force India team? Tata Motors owns the British Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) brand now.
Would there be any conflict of interest issues involved?
They might go down that route if they thought it was a good idea. I don’t it as a conflict of interest.
Personally I don’t see sport going behind pay-per-view for ages.
Sport attracts ‘customers’ through them getting a chance to see what the sport has to offer, it is also an escape from reality.
Being about to watch Formula 1 freely is a great relaxing way of watching something that has nothing much to do with anything else.
Put it behind a pay-per-view block and people wont get to see what Formula 1 is about before making up an opinion and hence choosing inevitably not to watch it. I started watching F1 here because it was on and I wanted to watch TV, I had heard of F1 and thought ‘why not give it a chance’, and I enjoyed it and found it a few times more looked up wikipedia and found out when it was on including the times. If I had to pay to taste it I wouldn’t be watching it, I would never have got started and hence another fan wouldn’t be watching. I’m sure many more are like this.
We often talk about how ‘true fans’ or whatever would pay anyway, but no new fans would because theywould be paying for something for which they don’t know what they would be getting.
Added to that many people watch whats on that interests them. If they have to pay for something regularly then they have to plan and that is completely the opposite of how many people watch TV, especially in those in younger gernations such as myself who have grown up with the Internet (albit sometime dialup) and TV access, no need to plan to do something, we have it, no computer? iphones have a lovely mobile version of this page. People I don’t think will want to plan for something so often, or atleast many wont.
After all of that you then need to factor in the cost. While we hate advertising, we are getting it for free at home. We watch the advertising but thats all, we don’t feel like it has cost us anything. If we want more spending money we save money elsewhere and TV pay-per-view is one of the first things to go.
I’m sure many would, given the choice, have some ads during a race like now instead of paying a few dollars for each race for 20-odd races. I know I would, and I hate ads
Maybe the best thing they can do is to have an official stream or replays of races and/or quali and/or FP1/2/3 and mke them available with advertising on the page to pay for it. That would guarentee views, is a small area and allows people to watch it with the mobility people are very quickly getting used to.
In short, I think pay-per-view isn’t right, and the opposite is desired for outcomes. F1 shouldn’t be put away but made more accessable as this leads to a great market. The only question is how to do this profitably.
I can never understand how F1, which pride itself on its technical accomplishments, cannot be more smart in the area of online distribution. I would happily pay an annual fee to watch each practise, qualifying and race online (as opposed to paying a monthly fee for pay tv, which I don’t do) from Formula1.com.
I live down under and I can guarantee you none of the big sports in the country (AFL, Rugby, Cricket) would dream of going to pay tv exclusively (all 3 codes do have a portion of their games on pay tv). In fact, the AFL managed last year to get 1.5 billion in a record tv rights deal. Going to pay tv massively reduces your viewer base and popularity. Soccer, despite being the world game, is mostly invisible in this country and having it on pay tv only doesn’t help it one bit. The AFL and Cricket also offers streaming over portable devices (ipads, mobile phones etc) and has done for years.
Bandwidth isn’t too big an issue either if you offer a number of streaming options (256k, 512k, 1.5MB etc). Let’s also not forget Indy cars has been doing it for years, as has Nascar.
I get the feeling that Bernie still looks at the internet as a joke and isn’t interested in seeing any developments in this area. Maybe it’s too complicated for him to get his head around?
Great website btw Joe. The high quality of your writing seriously makes me question why I pay for an autosport subscription (the quality of Autosport pieces has gone seriously downhill the last few years).
this is great news because TATA are very respeted business men and people have imence trust in them. I guess this should be good for both formula one and the fans across the globe.
I am a big fan of you joe love your work in bringing up usefull information to the fans.
Until bandwidth caps are removed from ISPs there will be no chance of this ever working.
Most ISPs cap at aroung 40GB per month. Now if you have three TVs all downloading HD content it would only take watching a few HD movies per month and your CAP is hit and no more TV! Which would mean no viewers for Mr E.
While I understand in some Asian countries Korea comes to mind that have full fibre optic system, in Europe we still run on copper wires for most of the connections, so until this comes in and the remove of the CAP, this will take a while to implement.
don’t know where you are, but my uk isp, aaisp, only charges for office hours allowances. I may overrate them, but in the scheme of things they get no respect. Maybe only one other gives you a clean feed for normal prices. I really don’t mind paying for top service whilst i work, having no caps after hours sorts me for os updates, disty downloads, all those necessary hogs. Just set the jobs to run in the window. Apols for the plug, Joe, not shilling for them, just ahem some people may be needing not messed with internet this season .. cough splutter
“Each regional market can be controlled, much as TV channels now do, stopping Internet users seeing their content, unless the viewer is in the right place.”
This is not true, it’s incredibly easy to bypass this kind of control using a proxy server – no tech skillz required, only google.
I can understand Bernies reticence to go all in for online, once its on the net, you loose a great deal of control. Regional based business models are the most vulnerable. You can’t charge too much in one area compared to another, the netizens will find a way round.
Speaking as an expatriate Brit living in France, I don’t see lack of territory controls as a bad thing.
I watched last season through a less-than-entirely-legal proxy connection to the BBC iPlayer site for a better programme, more technical insight and no adverts. And practice and qualifying coverage, which is on pay TV in France.
Having spent about £60 pounds for a year (which amounted to a subscription to F1 and Top Gear) I realise that if it were possible, I would have rather paid even double that money directly to the BBC for a worldwide access pass rather than to the proxy company.
But, of course, the BBC can’t officially broadcast, internet or not, to France because the regional rights are held by Eurosport and TF1.
I’m not sure if Joe reported on it at the time, but around the start of last year this stuff came up in the football world, when a British pub landlady won a case over the right to use an imported Greek decoder to screen English Premier League football matches.
The case was very much focused on the use of decoder cards rather than broadcasting as a whole, and will remain a topic of debate, but it tentatively opened a whole can of worms over the legitimacy under EU rules to a system of region-limited rights deals.
Press release here :
Click to access cp110102en.pdf
Yes goods must be in free circulation within the EEC. The landlady’s case was a huge landmark which may come and destroy Bernie’s setup when FTA coverage disappears in the UK.
Bernie has a bit of a history with the Euro courts.
The ECJ decision wasn’t very ground breaking at all. The actual content can be shown on any satellite system who have EU rights but the logos are copyright. The copyright holder can decide who, if anyone, has the rights to broadcast that copyright and where they can broadcast it.
Essentially the cars going round the track can be shown, but the graphics and logos cannot.
What? You thought the F1 logo in the corner was just there to look pretty?
Yes, but you are looking only at television. Copyright of a logo, does not mean copyright of a name. The World Intellectual Property Organisation has ruled that the term “F1” cannot be trademarked, even if the flying F1 logo can be. Thus the Formula One windscreen company has as much right to formulaone.com as the Formula One group. The trademarking of Grand Prix is similarly messy as the phrase pre-dates motor racing by several hundred years and is used in various different fields, as all it actually means is “Big Prize”. Thus tennis competitions use the term, as does golf, the cinema and various other activities.
That’s a very good explanation, along the “use it or loose it” line, also enshrined in the tmark statutes. We are temporal beings, wave the flag or don’t. Caveat: waving the flag enough or expensively enough, gains you extra statutory rights, also enshrined. Really does come down to budget, and in that, commercial law favors the payor.
David,
I disagree your suggestion the ruling was not ground breaking. I speak as someone who reads law and goes “Duh” before the hearings are, well, if I can read first . .. What you need is precedence. That is what is attained.
It is true, that the court here must yet recognize the ECJ decision, because that is the way the treaty is implemented. So there will be back chatter from BSkyB. But otherwise it is done, we created the precedence system, out of feudality and champerty and many mis-steps.
I am the first to argue that this permits a wall of money to survive not petty arguments. I have played both sides, and not yet lost. Just what counts, is the proverbial gavel. To deliberately undermine my earlier boast, I prefer to settle, because arguments and posturing bore me senseless.
But what was given, was a very strong argument, based on a much cleverer argument, which varied nothing as to tmark or copyright, and so was allowed, because it was a principle, that one should be allowed to sell stuff freely, and that is a higher right of free thinking people.
No connexion at all to the parties, just expressing respect for a useful bit of work.
At various impossible times of day / night I toddle down to my PC to “watch” F1 Live Timing and follow F1Fanatic. Now and then I may be able to catch a brief glimpse of some horrible-quality proxy stream that after a few seconds prompts me to install some app (“trust us”).
I would LOVE to pay a reasonable fee for legal, quality service of well-presented Grands Prix.
(Speed TV tries hard but doesn’t really qualify; i canceled cable)
Can you measure viewer numbers on webcast, I know that even red button has no measure (whereas figures are available for BBC) Once everyone has high speed streaming, the very easy use of proxy or torrents will make it very difficult to get payment. I am sure Tatas home market will give free content with english language commentary
I would presume that you can – at least in terms of page hits, which to my knowledge is how Youtube does it.
BBC’s iPlayer service also appears to list “most popular” and by implication you’d expect that to be backed up by statistics (and a chunk of code to update is automatically not manually) like their “most read” and “most shared” new stories.
While there are issues such as ISP caps, cheating via proxy, etc., such things are just bumps in the road if handled properly. Many millions can watch acceptable HD TV today, right now, without fiber running to the house. Re: people cheating via proxy to use sources from different territories, that’s a tiny drop in the bucket *if* vendor fee policies are reasonable. Given un-crazy subscription fees, the great majority will be happy to pay for a desirable product rather than use geeky-cheaty workarounds.
Now, if the vendor tries to charge insane fees from early adopters, he will be rewarded with a small subscription base and much more organized cheating via 2nd-order arrangements. Using aggressively good pricing to capture market share would prevent most of the nonsense, to the point where what remains won’t matter. It’s the greedy approach that can screw it up, which is the only reason I’m dubious, given the track record of who we’re dealing with.
In short, it won’t be decided by the technology, it will be decided by whether the policy maker is seeing this as a means of building an F1 that has much greater value vs. seeing it as just another opportunity for extracting wealth.
Sorry to tell you Joe, grandprix.com will not be needed and nor will formula1.com. It is now possible not to need to use .co.uk / .com / .eu
all you use is the company name ie. (for example not .ie which is Ireland)
live.fom / tv.formulaone
Yes, but you have own all of these things and that costs a lot of money. And you then have to spend more money promoting them as brands. It makes little sense because the average man in the street thinks of what he wants and types it into Google. Type grandprix and the first thing that comes up is grandprix.com and then formula1.com. That says it all really. The .com is all that matters at the moment. Maybe one day people will go to more complicated things, but we are by nature lazy and do what is obvious.
I think these alternative generic top names are a scam. I only recently obtained the dot EU, which was swiped despite I had priority registration (paid handsomely to apply) because the registrar who i paid was a squatter company, (quite a big scandal, as i was not by far the only person thought they were legit, including the large agent we went through) and just recently, coughed up for the triple-X version of my company name, which is going to cost me 60 quid ransom a year ongoing, or more to simply remove it as I don’t want anything even registered at all under that. I also pay for a good number of country top level domains for my company. Those will be useful in time, but this fragmentation is all to suit profiteers. Remember that a nice bloke called Jon Postel used to do the dot com by hand, then the registry was handed to some government favorites who sweated it for fortunes. Maybe going to joe.f1 or js.f1 might be fun, (network geek in me says I’d run the nameservers or some other infrastructure from a nice short name like that) but distraction helps nobody. Just applying to have a extension of your own is I think 200K. Money for old rope, and forces upgrades all across the system. Try advertising gpplus.saward? cocacola.coke? Ugly. Try another thing: ESATA and USB 3.0 and ExpressCard – all slots on the last laptop I bought. Almost nothing – proportionately – on sale uses those good things because almost nothing wasn’t awful before.
A good portion of normal people – including myself sometimes – just type in the name and hit return. Google or Bing or Yahoo sort the rest. You have the dot com, because it is a convention. Originally it was supposed to be the only commercial extension. Ours was registered in ’98 – left that far too long. But it’s what people expect. I certainly don’t mind if soon enough it’s not trendy and dates us!
In the real world, when not commenting on F1 blogs, I work as a patent and trade mark attorney, and so thought I would chip in with my tuppence worth on this:
The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) does not itself regulate the registration of domain names – this is done by a body called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). However, WIPO does act as an Approved Dispute Resolution Service Provider for ICANN in the event of a dispute arising over ownership of a domain name, under a procedure known as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).
It is worth noting though that WIPO is only one of several Approved Dispute Resolution Service Providers authorised to deal with domain name disputes. The others include the (US) National Arbitration Forum and the Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre. This enables complainants to do a bit of “forum shopping” to bring a complaint before the service provider they think will be most sympathetic to their case.
Another relevant point is that owning a trade mark registration for an expression, such as “formula one” is not a pre-requisite for bringing a complaint under the UDRP. The complainant need only have some right to the expression – which could include what in the UK would be called a “common law” right, ie an unregistered trade mak, in which the owner has obtained a reputation by virtue of extensive us of the expression over a number of years.
Moreover, registered (and unregistered) trade mark rights are regulated on a national basis, not by WIPO. And a complainant need only have right in one country in order to bring a complaint against a .com domain name, which is deemd to have international character.
The upshot of all this is that FOM probably has sufficient rights in the expression “formula one” to be able to make a UDRP complaint against the owners of http://www.formulaone.com stick, if they really wanted to. FOM has its own in-house lawyers and trade mark attorneys who must be well aware of this. In my opinion this means either (1) they are already doing a deal to acquire it; or (2) they don’t want it.
Lawyers always have different opinions, but if they enough to win a case they would have done it by now. The other company has just as much right as FOM to the domain name as it sells a product called Formula One as is not cyber-squatting.
I agree it is not cyber-squatting. But the fact that it is an automotive product could suggest that there was an element of bad faith in the company choosing to use that name – ie free-riding on the goodwill and reputation of the F1 brand in relation to motor-related stuff. This is a different situation to the hotel brand referred to by one of your other posters, since there is no obvious connection between the provision of hotel services and motorsport, whereas there is a more immediate connection (in the mind of consumers) between an automotive product and a motorsport championship.
I have seen trade mark and domain name cases succeed on far less.
Can we have an update on the Munich trial? It’s been very quiet for some time now.
It is in recess.
Formula1.com was owned by a lady who Bernie tried to demolish in court, he lost, the judge noted that many other unrelated entities are called Formula1, not least a chain of hotels. Bernie then persuaded the lady to sell Formula1.com for several handfulls of moola.
Joe has every right to own part of grandprix.com but it is registered to http://www.slicehost.com who run cloud servers. It seems to be quite an active site but as far as I can see it contains no links to Joe.
Why do people have to doubt everything that I say? I know what I own. And I know what I write. If you looked a little more closely you will see that I wrote the majority of the website content from 2000 until 2009, and a large part of the encyclopedia as well. And you are wrong about the registration. It is registered to a company called Inside F1 Inc. Just take my word for it and save yourself wasted energy.
Apologies Joe, but only going on what I see, hearing you own or part own another site, naturally I went to have a look. with high expectations.
There only appears to be content from Oct 2010 onward on the site. There is no author accreditation in the encyclopedia that is readily viewable. The archive link does not currently work. The domain address 67.23.36.188 on a “Whois” query resolves to the server as I said above. Yes I see now on the “Terms of use” page that the owners are as you say. Sorry!
I think I have probably done enough over the years to suggest that I can be trusted, so when I say that I own a significant shareholding in grandprix.com you might just take it as read that this is case. I do not know what you are doing but when I check it out I get this:
http://www.whois.net/whois/grandprix.com
http://www.grandprix.com/ns/f1newsarchive-1995.html
http://www.grandprix.com/featuresarchive.html (scroll down)
The reason that my name is not there is that I did not want to be associated with the website, after I decided to go my own way.
I remain a significant shareholder.
I want to make it perfectly clear that I was not doubting Joe’s word, not would I, but commenting on what I found.
The link has been mended to the archives now, though it did fail again once this morning. The whois data also now works both on the net version and the straight applet, probably a server glitch yesterday..
Any chance of porting your stuff over from the features archive Joe, some cracking pieces in there?
I think it’s wise to be wary about this stuff, monitoring it and following up if there’s a hint of the records not being correct. Recently I almost tossed a piece of junk mail but realized at the last minute that it was threatening to “disown” the domain name for an organization I support. Fixed now… I hope (I check weekly).
Sounds like Bernie needs better lawyers . . .
Apparently her name was Nicky Morris, she was doing ok with 750,000 hits per day selling F1 items and tickets. The WIPO found against Bernie. He then filed a trademark infringement suit against her in the US, but she countered with an anti trust suit. Meanwhile the FIA had banned photographers from supplying her site.
Bernie offered her an undisclosed sum which she accepted in January 2002 just before the courts kicked off.
Some of that is certainly true.
Hi Joe
Looking forward to the Melbourne catch up.
Whatever happened with grandprix.com that ultimately led you here if your name is still on the door, so to speak?
Or is that a question best saved for March 14?
Thanks
Yeah, I will answer that one there.
Right…noted down to make absolutely sure it gets asked and answered 🙂
“Bernie Ecclestone says that free-to-air TV in sport is doomed as the business is changing and media organisations cannot generate the same kinds of revenues as the pay-per-view services.”
I wouldn’t be asking Bernie Ecclestone for advice on the future of TV in sport if that really is his view. The NFL will generate $4billion a year for the next 10 years from free-to-air TV, they also have a complimentary online strategy.
“Each regional market can be controlled, much as TV channels now do, stopping Internet users seeing their content, unless the viewer is in the right place.”
… I hope not. I’d much rather pay to watch the BBC F1 or Sky UK F1 online feed than the Sky Germany one. I’d like to have Ecclestone’s phone number. Or maybe Donald McKenzies’.
020 7584 6668
I fully agree with the last paragraph.
“Content is King” we are always told regarding internet websites.
Apart from showing race weekends on it’s website, FOM also needs to look at what it can provide between races and out of season, and more importantly, appeal to a global audience each with their unique viewing culture.
Let me know when Bernie is ready to accept payments from 500 million rabid F1 fans and deliver video to each of their respective countries in their local language and fix it when it doesn’t work.
All this does is replace (or more likely augment) satellite transponder bandwidth with terrestrial fiber bandwidth. We’ve been delivering broadcast quality video over terrestrial fiber networks for many years now. Do a search on “satellite versus terrestrial networks” to discover why satellite networks are still used to transport video (even when fiber may be readily available).
Furthermore, why in the heck would F1 go through the trouble to rebrand it’s web presence from F1.com to grandprix.com when it has already registered F1.tv… not to mention the confusion that will occur with the granprix.com domain?
Hi Joe,
I think everyone is missing a trick as you’ve pointed out time and time again Mr. E has an ability to release misinformation to suit his contract negotiations.
The Broadcasters are under significant pressure to their share holders to raise revenues which come from Advertising while reducing their costs. As seen with the BBC altering their contract with the Formula one Group, Mr. E would rather sell to the next bidder than see a drop in revenue. At the same time, Mr.E always mentioned as a devil about the details of a contract.
I imagine that he’s figured out that most of his current Broadcasters don’t have digital rights to the Formula One races for their markets so he can sell those as well as the traditional broadcast rights. Probably another ploy to drive the price up for traditional broadcasters while rolling out a new solution provider to F1 that is meeting a technological need. Either digital rights are included for a higher return in the next broadcaster contract or he can sell it on to someone else. Ironically, I’m sure the BBC’s iPlayer data of F1 broadcasts will be rolled out as part of the pitch to add a digital element.
I don’t think people need to get too concerned about F1 going to pay-per-view just yet as that is not the way the TV world is going. Media research companies have been providing incremental audience reach figures for TV + Internet for a while now. But it’s a good way to generate press about a sport in the off season.
Any idea of when TV contracts are due to expire by market as you’ve done with F1 promoters by race? And which broadcasters have the digital rights in their contracts?