Clash over Internet sports photos

The practice is already well established in Germany, where its soccer league pushed through photo restrictions a few years ago. However, photo control is just emerging as an issue in other parts of Europe, where the moves are raising fears in the media that sports authorities are trying to wrest control of image making. The current licensing deal between the Newspaper Publishers Association and the British soccer authorities was set to expire on the weekend. Ahead of the deadline, negotiations came to a standstill, largely over the use of Web photographs. Sports negotiators were trying to impose a two-hour embargo after the end of a game before papers could post photos of their sites. In addition, they wanted to impose limited windows of opportunities during games when photographers could send out images. According to one league official, the teams believe that newspaper Web sites have evolved and do not necessarily reflect the same material as their printed pages. Full New York Times report