Major League Baseball has a idiotic policy — it does everything in its power to make sure you can't see highlights of baseball games.
It takes everything that has an MLB copyright off of YouTube. It only makes a handful of videos embeddable for the public. Generally, it wants you to follow baseball MLB.com, or not at all.
It's a dumb policy because websites like us can't cover the sport like we want to, and readers like you can only enjoy the sport in a controlled, limited, MLB.com-approved capacity.
And just when we thought the policy couldn't get any dumber, MLB might be taking it a step further. It is reportedly attempting to ban or put a 24-hour embargo on GIF's of MLB action, according to Scott Lewis of The Score.
GIF's are these looped, goofy moving picture things (below). They last roughly four seconds, and constitute 1/151,200th of an MLB work, according to Deadspin's Timothy Burke. That's it.
There's nothing official yet. But if it happens, it will represent a new level of idiocy in an already ass-backwards policy that stunts the growth of the game and puts baseball even further behind the times in a world where "viral" is an essential concept for all businesses.
MLB can truly do nothing right. Somehow it completely ruined and devalued one of their beloved traditions, Opening Day. And now it's doing everything possible to make sure baseball only exists inside the domain of MLB.com.
WARNING, CONTRABAND BELOW! AVERT YOUR EYES!
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