Cricket Australia said it had no plans to shut down Rob Moody’s channel © Rob Moody
Already deprived of live action, cricket fans were spared further agony as the hugely popular Twitter account of Rob Moody (robelinda2) came back to life after being temporarily shut down for copyright infringement. Moody’s Twitter and YouTube streams have long been the biggest video library in cricket – his YouTube channel has over 700,000 subscribers and his Twitter handle is followed by close to 40,000 people – but on Tuesday morning, Twitter suspended his account in response to a copyright infringement notice by Cricket Australia.
The news sparked outrage among cricket fans – Aaron Finch and Tom Moody among them – and it turned out the notice had been sent in error, and CA had retracted it. No less a figure than CA chairman Earl Eddings admitted he was a fan of the archive, which had got him “through some difficult times through the lockdown”. ESPNcricinfo understands that Moody’s archive has been on a “do not touch” list for the last six years when it comes to CA content.
At least in the board chairman, the fans seemed to have found an ally. “First of all, I love Rob Moody’s work, it’s got me through some difficult times through the lockdown as well,” Eddings said during a press interaction when a reporter brought his attention to the issue. “I reached out to him a couple of months ago as I think his skillset’s fantastic. What he brings to the game, bringing old footage back to some of us balding, older grade cricketers has been great.
“I’m not aware of the situation you just announced, more than happy to look into it. I know he’s had some challenges with ICC historically, but we’ll certainly take that offline with him, because it’s a great service, albeit needs to be done in the correct and legal way. Thanks for bringing that to my attention, I’ll have a look at that.”
Moments after that, CA tweeted about its error: “Some good news: The copyright claims against @robelinda2 were made in error and have been retracted. The videos should be back up and running soon. We’ve got no plans to shut down Rob’s old gold and will follow up on the processes around this.”
Embarrassed at the attention he had attracted, Moody responded: “Shout out to CA chairman @EddingsEarl for helping out today, and for liking my videos! It means a lot indeed. In all the days busy events that are far more important than my little things, it was a very heartwarming stuff!”
While Moody – and cricket fans – can rest easy regarding his use of any footage that belongs to CA, the copyrights issue with other boards and ICC remains a challenge for fan-curated material.
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo