Indian media lobby criticises IPL's guidelines

A day after premier news agencies voiced their concern about the IPL's media guidelines, the Editors Guild of India - an influential lobby group - has criticised what it calls "prohibitive conditions" that are "unprecedented and unacceptable to the Indian media." The criticism, in a letter from the Guild to Sharad Pawar, the BCCI president, and Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, comes on a day the league confirmed that websites would not be given accreditation for the tournament.

The Sports Journalists' Federation of India also issued a statement expressing "alarm and concern" over the IPL's conditions and asked that the "unfair and unethical restrictions being placed on the media be withdrawn unconditionally".

The contentious conditions include the IPL's right to use all pictures taken at its grounds for free and without restrictions; the commitment by news organisations to upload on the IPL site, within 24 hours, all images taken at the ground; and the restriction of web portals' access to images without prior permission from the IPL.

"The conditions described in the form stipulate, among other things, that the media cannot use any image or photograph in any other publication, even if it belongs to the same organisation. Indirectly, it is making a claim on the images taken by the media organisations as a property of the IPL," the Guild's letter said.

"To say the least, this is a ridiculous claim, unheard of in the annals of free India's media tradition. The IPL is even making a claim on the said property for future use. The rules also stipulate that still images, taken by accredited photographers cannot be used for online editions of the newspapers for which the photographers may be working. In an age when most newspapers are also available to online readers, this stipulation is extremely untenable."

On Thursday, the IPL had indicated it was open to negotiations on the contentious conditions. However, it came out with another condition on Friday: those working for websites will not be granted accreditation for the event. "We will not be granting accreditation to websites as we will be having a site of our own for IPL," Ratnakar Shetty, the BCCI's chief administrative officer and an ex-officio member of the IPL board, said.

It is believed that a decision to this effect was taken during a meeting involving media accreditation officials on Thursday night. IS Bindra, a member of the IPL's governing council, told Cricinfo on Thursday that the portal rights for the event had been sold to a US company for US$50 million.