The FreeDawkins YouTube channel.

I of the nearly popular YouTube channels for NBA highlights and clips is FreeDawkins, which has been on YouTube since January 2015 and has 1.42 million subscribers for the main channel (plus 244,000 for VintageDawkins, focused on older clips, and 53,600 for SQUADawkins). This calendar week saw all NBA content disappear from those channels' public pages, with the chief FreeDawkins channel at present showing just seven videos from the 2019 FIBA Globe Cup, ane video from a 2003 high school dunk contest, and 1 video of "12 facts on Zion Williamson." (Many of the one-time videos appear to still be there in playlists, just fix to private, but merely the vii are accessible past the public.)

The disappearance of FreeDawkins' NBA content has led to a lot of word on Reddit and other social media platforms, with a lot of people bashing the NBA and saying this seems inconsistent with commissioner Adam Silver'south comments at the 2015 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. There, Silver said the league tends not to get afterward unauthorized channels focused on NBA highlights, proverb "for the nearly part, highlights are marketing." And if that arroyo had indeed changed, that would be significant.

But an NBA source told Awful Announcing that they're not involved with the FreeDawkins takedown in any way, and that the NBA'south overall approach to unauthorized highlights channels hasn't changed since Silver's 2015 comments. Here are those comments that Silver made in February 2015, via a Sports Illustratedarticle from Matt Dollinger (they're at signal #thirty):

​thirty. Why doesn't the NBA crack down on people ripping highlights and putting them on YouTube? NBA commissioner Adam Argent explained: "Highlights are marketing." Stealing highlights isn't annihilation new. Silver said long before the NBA was in business with ESPN, SportsCenter used to steal its highlights all the time under news access rules and the interpretation of the first subpoena.

"We're incredibly protective of our alive game rights, simply for the most part highlights are marketing," Argent said.

The commissioner said he would honey for Twitter users to one day be able to click a button and purchase a game if they feel compelled later seeing a highlight.

Due to cablevision restrictions, the merely way to purchase NBA games is by buying the right to lookout man an entire flavor through League Pass. But Silver envisions a setup where fans tin buy games individually.

"Well-nigh people don't desire to consume that many games," Silver explained.

That latter give-and-take of letting fans buy individual games (and also unmarried-team streaming packages) became reality in June 2015, just a few months after Silver'due south comments. And the NBA has since gone even further, announcing in September 2018 that they'd sell partial game options (including just the fourth quarter for $i.99) and announcing in March 2019 that they'd sell the last x minutes of games for 99 cents. So the thought of Twitter highlights producing actual immediate revenue for them is more than of a reality at present than information technology was when Silver fabricated those 2015 remarks. And while after-the-fact YouTube highlights similar the ones from FreeDawkins aren't going to have people buy the games in question, the "Highlights are marketing" line from Silver still holds up; for instance, if viewers picket a "Zach LaVine Best Game Highlights" playlist, mayhap they opt to purchase some hereafter game (or portion of a game) involving LaVine that they wouldn't purchase otherwise.

As SI's Luke Winkie wrote in a 2016 piece on channels like FreeDawkins, "Information technology seems like the NBA could shutter all these channels pretty easily if they wanted. Their case is ironclad; people outside the Association using its telecasts for profit is strictly prohibited, that's not exactly in the fine impress." (That slice mentions that a 2016 SocialBlade estimate of earnings from the main FreeDawkins channel was something between $69,000 and $one.1 1000000 a twelvemonth, then at that place'due south definitely turn a profit to be had.)  If the NBA had inverse their policies on people using their highlights, that would explain why all the NBA clips went away. But the above NBA source comments that they haven't changed their policies and weren't involved with the FreeDawkins videos going away suggest that takedown comes from another source.

It's unclear what that other source is. Some past copyright takedowns take come up from leagues, such every bit the English language Premier League's in 2014 (which saw Bleacher Report's United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland Twitter business relationship suspended) and the NFL'due south in 2015 (which saw the Deadspin and SBNationGIF Twitter accounts briefly suspended). The 2015 suspensions of those accounts were interesting, as the DMCA takedown notices showed; the NFL (through third-party business firm NetResult Solutions) complained nigh specific clips, merely didn't asking account break or termination, while the UFC asked for account termination of @Deadspin over a GIF of a Ronda Rousey fight,  and another third party, XOS Digital, went after @SBNationGIF on behalf of the Big 12 and the SEC.

The IOC also managed to get people banned from Twitter in 2016 over complaints around GIFs of Olympic highlights. In that location have as well been enough of suspensions originating from complaints by music rightsholders over copyrighted music in videos, which appears to be what's backside suspensions of a lot of official higher team Twitter accounts over the years. One of the nearly bizarre suspensions came in 2019, when NBC Premier League analyst Kyle Martino received a brief ban from Twitter for…posting video from NBC'south Fan Fest, an event hosted by the network he works for, which had the U.Southward. rights to the event in question.

So there take been lots of copyright-related takedowns over the years originating from numerous sources, and it's not articulate what'southward behind this i. (If it is in fact a copyright takedown; that would seem to exist the most likely thing here, only information technology'south not the only explanation.) But it's interesting that the NBA is proverb they didn't take anything to do with this. For now, FreeDawkins is still posting NBA videos to Facebook; we'll see if the YouTube content eventually returns, or if it'south gone for good.

Near Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He previously worked at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.