Power to the People ! The union of Google and Youtube has been described as a triumph of the consumer’s interests over corporate control. The big media entities, as evidenced by all the deals cut with Google and Youtube, CBS, WMG, Universal, et al, really gets it this time. That Mark Cuban is moronic, and this time its different.

Let me be the first to get in the moron line if this means the end of DRM on content.. I have no financial interest in Google or YouTube, but their union and their combined avoidance of DRM certainly saved me money this morning and will for a long time to come.

I decided to go “shopping” for music. Pre GooTube I would have gone to Itunes and skipped around looking for new music. Sample it and if i like it , buy it. I usually start at the top of the Top Songs List and if I like it , I buy it. So for this shopping trip, as I write this, I have ITunes Store open, I have Youtube.com open, Video.Google.com open, all in tabs in my firefox brower. I also have the unplug extension installed. I could just have easily used Keepvid.com or any number of others that work as easily. A simple search on google finds a ton of options for Google Video or Youtube

Oops. That video is converted and in my ipod already. Total Video Converter is a kick ass program. It can combine files, it can extract just the audio into an MP3. That is coming in handy right now because I just got to have Sexy Back from Justin, and I dont really want the video, and you can get kick ass quality audio from the videos. Boom. Its in my Ipod.

But wait there’s more. This quicklist feature is kickass from Youtube ! From the YouTube Homepage i got to Scarface Crunk, Which has the Say Hello to my Little Friend scene. Cool, perfect for my Ipod. But wait, whats this ? The beauty of Youtube !

In related videos , here is scarface sliced into 17 nice little pieces. Not Al Pacino, the movie itself. Just quicklist them into 2 lists, grab em, and then use Total Video Converter to combine them into 1 Movie File for my Ipod. The quality is good enough for my Ipod, no sweat. Then it dawns on me. With this quicklist feature. I dont have to download these songs 1 at a time. I can quicklist them and batch load them to my Ipod…It doesnt take much if any time longer than buying from Itunes. Am I a smart consumer or what.

DAMN, something just occured to me. I can move the money I spend from the Ipod Music budget over to the Dairy Queen Blizzard budget i had previous decimated to fill my Ipod. ! I really miss Heath and Reese Cup Blizzards, thank you Gootube !!!…

Wait a minute, whats that ? Is that my conscience ???

The little angel on my left shoulder says “Dont you remember all those RIAA and MPAA commercials you saw ?? Downloading this music and movie is a crime. Dont do it.”

The Devil on my right says..”Go for it . You know they want you to just take it. Thats why its there. Thats why its free. Thats why Google bought YouTube. Thats why none of these sites are getting sued. Bbecause its all different now . Repeat after me, music is free from now on !”

Wait a minute, who is the little guy hovering in front of me ? Dang, it looks like a Google lawyer ! Is he using a juet propulsion pack to fly ? No, its a floating Segway. Wow ! He is saying “No problem mark. You didnt crack any DRM, we dont use any !. You just downloaded a file from one of the most popular sites in the world and converted it to a format that works for your Ipod. We put it up there for you to take, so take it ! If copyright owners didnt want it there, they would have sent us a Take Down Notice !. I must be right because millions of people do it every day ! You wonder how I can fly with this Segway ? Its the DMCA Safe Harbor laws keeping me safe and floating. Take all the music, movies and videos you want, our users will upload more ! Enjoy , enjoy, enjoy !”

Thank goodness for hallucinations, they make things so clear sometimes.

Kudos to Youtube for getting them to say yes. My advice to you is to always protect your downside. Ignore all the scammers who want your money, and dont listen to all the tax scammers who want to save you money on taxes. Writing that check is painful, but its the right thing to do. That aside..

It will be interesting to see what happens next and what happens in the copyright world. I still think Google Lawyers will be a busy, busy bunch. I dont think you can sue Google into oblivion, but as others have mentioned, if Google gets nailed one single time for copyright violation, there are going to be more shareholder lawsuits than doans has pills to go with the pile on copyright suits that follow. Think maybe how Google discloses what they perceive the copyright risk to be in the SEC filings might be an interesting read ?

I think there will be supoenas to get the names of Youtube and Google Video users. Lots of them as those copyright owners not part of the gravy train go after both Google and their users for infringement.

It will be interesting to see how this impacts DRM. As it stands now, there is no DRM on all that video being offered from Google or YouTube. Millions of copyrighted videos that their owners spent a boatload to copyprotect that is available to everyone and everyone without it. (Personally i think DRM is a waste of money, but will all those labels and content providers ?)

I think it was interesting how Google and YT both rushed to get deals done with the music labels. That tells me that they arent comfortable hiding behind the safe harbor laws. If they were, they would just be telling people to send take down notices rather than doing deals that require software to detect copyrights.

It will be interesting to see if Youtube moves their videos over to Googles Data Centers. Google is a centralized datacenter with peering from what I can tell. COmpletely different than what the CDN networks do. Will that set a new trend ? It makes bandwidth much cheaper as others have pointed out.

It will be interesting to see just how google reconciles selling videos like Crazy in Love from Sony, when the same video is available as a user upload for free from youtube.

it will be interesting to see how Fox reacts to this deal Fox owns content. Neither google or YT does. Could Fox, the owner of Myspace put GooTube in a huge hole by being legally aggressive and going after every video of Stewy from Family Guy , American Idol, any of their TV shows ? The same with their movies. Beyond just Gootube, (and I mash them together with nothing but love , Fox could make them look real bad by using supoaenas to go after individual Gootube users. Fox is also a stickler for DRM, they aint gonna like having their content floating DRM free around the net. Sure, myspace would have to clean up some of their own videos, but it would be a far easier chore than Gootube has. Now that would be a celebrity lawyer match worth watching.

Which in turns means that the Copyright Detection Systems in place by Google better be a whole lot better than they are right now. They are going to have to detect music, TV Network Bugs, all kinds of protected materials. Right now they are doing nothing. Which leads to movies, like ours

We sent our Take down notice today by fax. But should I supoaena the name of the person who uploaded it ? I wont. Someone else will for their content.

And what if Im completely, absolutely wrong and no one sues anyone ? That everyone just loves the fact that their content is available to tens of millions of viewers and advertisers and Youtube and Google definitely qualify to be protected behind the Safe Harbors of the DMCA ?

That Im an idiot and it really is different this time, and the content companies have all recognized that ?

Well, I’m ready for that too. I went ahead and registered www.effingreat.com because thats how much fun its going to be using Filesanywhere.com features to support a “load everything you own and share it with world” website.

I will host in the same way as Youtube and Google. Upload in the same, dont ask, dont tell approach. I will sell ads however they do. Preroll, or adsense or whatever.

Only i will expand the storage beyond 100mbs and will open it up to books, term papers, pictures, movies, music, articles, anything and everything that can be digitized. I will add the appropriate disclaimers and provide a cool social networking interface. Maybe something like Goowy.Com or maybe something like Flixster.com. I mean, why not ? What could be cooler User Generated Content than the termpaper you wrote on Daniel Boone ? Or what could be more interesting than scanning in a book you wanted to give to someone and just posting it ? And dang, just wholesale upload all of your MP3s.

And best of all, I would get a license for public performance from ASCAP/BMI so the people that have to fight the hardest to get paid, actually do !

And of course I would have some other tricks up my sleeve. Maybe pull a page from the old shareware days. Add a paypal link to every content page and let people get paid for their original content. If no one is going to sue anyone for copyright infringement anymore, maybe you could upload stuff you dont have the rights to and get paid by generous people who want to transfer some dollars via PayPal to you.

Am I suprised, by the Google YT deal. Yes. Does it open up a whole new world if they go liability free ?

You have no idea.

1. You arent an ISP.
2. You are offering to download this file to anyone. Just click on the download button.
3. Since you make no effort prevent this file being uploaded any number of times, its not reasonable to expect a copyright owner to check an unlimited times of day to see if one of our movies has been uploaded

<embed style=”width:400px; height:326px;” id=”VideoPlayback” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” src=”http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-7121342145021187229&hl=en”> </embed>

Would Google be crazy to buy Youtube. No doubt about it. Moronic would be an understatement of a lifetime.

Would Google be stupid to do a deal with Youtube. Not at all. Would Youtube be smart to do a deal with Google. Thats a different answer.

If Google went to Youtube, like they did Myspace and said they would pay them a minimum of hundreds of millions of dollars a year in exchange for letting Google sell text and video ads on Youtube, as long as there were performance requirements it would make perfect sense for Google.

So for Google to say, we will pay youtube Xpct of our revenue we generate from your site as long as you generate X number of users/views/minutes watched, whatever metric they choose. That would be a great deal for Google.

Why ? Because it would get them the opportunity to become the leader in selling video/rich media ads and to enhance their publishing/ad sales to incorporate video for any site that wants to use Google. Of course Google would build in protections against getting sued into oblivian. Their many lawyers will take care of that .

The real question is whether this is a good deal for Youtube. Of the surface how could it not be, right ?

They could be playing Google off against possibly MicroSoft and Yahoo who both will want to dominate and publishing video ads across the web to get the best possible guarantees and percentage of revenue.

They could be pushing for promotional support , maybe even becoming the defaul video for Google or whoever they partner with.

With Google, they may be probing them to host all those videos in the super secret server farms that host Google servers and probably some black helicopters as well.

Like Myspace, they could walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars. Five or Six years, $1.6billion in guaranteed advertising reveue from Google ? Not inconceivable as a deal. Plus it meets the Youtube criteria of not wanting to sell the company.

But that price is probably too high if the Google/Myspace deal already includes video because Google/Mysapce video alone can establish Google as a video ad outlet. ( Since that deal was done before Myspace really pushed into hosting its own video, its hard to know.).

But then its possible that Google wants to pre empt any competition and will pay whatever it takes to lock up both Youtube and Myspace.

What a great deal either way for Youtube, right ?

Maybe not.

300mm a year in revenue doesn’t go as far as it used to. Youtube now becomes a deep pocketed target. Sure, they can try to work out deals with the biggest media companies, but those deals are going to be ultra expensive. If not monstrous up front payments, then huge percent of revenue hits. But that will be the easy part.

This is where the long tail comes back to bite you in the ass. There aint no compulsory license for video. You got to work your way up the long tail , one at a time. Licensing each. Thats an impossible job, which is why the webcasting and related industries have fought for compulsory licenses.

Its not the big companies they would have to worry about the most. Its the little guy. Youtube would get sued by the thousands of rights holders who will seek the maximum amount per download from Youtube for their content.

This is where Youtube is really screwed. Youtube doesn’t stream. They use progressive download. So the damage claims are going to be per download and enormous.

Its obvious what Youtube is trying to do. They are trying to push the obligation of licensing rights out on the rights holders by hiding behind the Safe Harbor rules of the DMCA. Make the rights holders find the copyrighted materials out of 60k uploads a day rather than make Youtube find the copyright owners of the materials uploaded.

As I have said many times, that shit aint gonna fly. I dont think so, and neither does a long, long list of copyright owners. We arent just talking big media companies. We are talking fake a lawsuit companies.

Dont think for a minute that there wont be lawyers writing songs, having their buddies perform them, and putting them on Youtube, jerry rigging the number of views via any number of easy to do processes and then suing Youtube over it.. It will be the Youtube version of shareholder lawsuits. They wont need no stinkin take down notices. They will claim that Youtube isnt a hosting company, they are a media company with licensing deals, getting paid for advertising around video. Just like every other media company

Could Youtube collect enough money to fight it out and pay out enough ? Maybe. But the thing about these lawsuits is that they keep coming and coming. THe way Youtube currently does things, they would NEVER end.

Which leads to this question. Why wouldnt Youtube start policing for copyrights ? If they dont have a license, dont put it on the site. Simple. Takes away 100pct of the risk. Makes everyone happy. Dont you wonder what scares them away from doing this ? Sure they only have 60 people, but hey, one of the biggest challenges of running a business is paying for growth.

If the videos are no longer than 10 minutes each. Thats 600k minutes per day. 10k Hours max. You can hire 1000 people in a datacenter to review videos. 1k people, 10k with overhead per month. (if they buy US rather than overseas) Thats 10mm per month. x 12 months, thats 120mm . And thats if they want to get the videos posted as soon as they are re encoded . Add a delay and the number of employees drops dramatically. Plus, as they license content, the number of videos under license should match the growth in video, so emp count can remain constant.

If User Generated Content is as popular as everyone says it is, whats the risk for them to respect copyright and only host safe content on the sight ?

And for what its worth, everything I just said applies to every video hosting site, not just Youtube.
The copyright shit is going to hit the lawsuit fan. Personally, I think the site that has this handled first is going to be in a great position to leapfrog those who dont. They can be out enabling great user created content and building traffic while everyone else is fighting lawsuits

I was reading the transcript of the press conference that Commissioner Stern of the NBA and Jordi Bertomeu of the EuroLeague held in Barcelona this week.

I was just trying to keep up to speed on things, but somethings that Jordi Bertomeu said really got me thinking.

“We want to make our basketball visible around the world. The Euroleague is already seen in 120 countries, and thanks to this platform with the NBA and David, we have the opportunity
to reach more of our target.”

and

Jordi Bertomeu on Europeans in the NBA
“I believe the main problem is not that players go away, because they go and come back, too. We have to grow and make Euroleague Basketball attractive enough that they don’t go away. That’s our job. “

I guess I never really followed the business aspirations of the Euroleague, but one thing becomes amazingly clear in reading his remarks. Mr Bertomeu doesnt want to be a minor league or feeder system to the NBA. He wants to compete with the NBA.

The guy sure seems smart. Its the brilliant, if someone allows you to do it to them, scorpion and frog approach to business. The scorpion professes his love for the frog. The frog puts the scorpion on his back and takes him across the pond that the scorpion would not otherwise be able to crosee. On the otherside the scorpion basically looks at the frog, says “thanks for the ride, but Im still a scorpion” and stings and kills the frog.

I, like I think a lot of my brethren in the NBA, thought that we were leveraging the EuroLeagues to develop talent that we brought over here to improve the level of play in our games. We at the NBA brag over and over how our support of development of basketball around the world, starting with the Dreamteam, has lead to international players progressing far enough to reach the NBA. Jordi wants to say thank you for all your work, from now on, they stay here.

After reading this, and Im only surmising here, Jordi may feel that he can use the NBA as a frog to get his league across the pond and prove his league is the NBA’s equal

Smart guy.
Why not let the NBA spend tons of money around the world to develop the game of basketball. For the Euroleague its simply a marketing subsidy. Why not let the NBA pay their own way to come over and use their biggest stars to promote and brand Euroleague teams, league and players to his fans and customers. Why not let them play Euroleague teams. Euroleague can make some money from the games and if the Euroleague teams win, start defining to not just non American players how good the league is, but to American players as well. If players anywhere in the world, including the USA start understanding that Euroball is as good, and in the eyes of some purists, better basketball than the NBA, why wouldnt American players choose playing Euroleague instead of the NBA ? Why wouldnt non American players choose to stay here rather than go to the NBA ?

Maybe Im seeing something thats not there. But I would prefer not to underestimate possible competition. Jordi is absolutely right to keep NBA teams coming over there, and supporting his players going to the USA. NBA players can become global brands and the more international players that beome global brands, single name players like Dirk, Pau, Yao, Tony, the more credence to his argument that their basketball is as good as NBA basketball, and the brilliance of it all is that the NBA teams pay for it on both sides. We pay the players salaries. We pay to develop them into brands. We pay to come to Europe. We pay their teams to get players out of their contracts and help subsidize the teams. The money right now is on the American side, so why not let the Americans foot the bills. They do it for the Olympics, why not Euroleague ?

I’m reading a really good book, Behavioral Corporate Finance, and it discusses how executives approach business decisions and one of the recurring themes reflects arrogance in the decision making process.

Is the NBA showing arrogance by presuming that its our job to build basketball around the world and that we will be the primary beneficiary ? Is our arrogance blinding us to the possibility that we are subsidizing a world class competitor ? I think its something we in the NBA have to consider.

If basketball players around the world truly have become equal in skill to American players, could the number of international players in the NBA be more a function of our style of play than any superiority in quality of play ?

If you look at NBA rosters and estimate that there will be about international 75 players that make team rosters, in glancing at that list, fewer than 10 are under 6’5. Which means almost all of our guards are North American, and a disproportionate number of forwards and centers are international. Which makes perfect sense. How many professional sports are better suited for tall guys than basketball ? Which sport are the tallest guys in their class in any town in the world funnelled to ? Basketball.

Which all leads to the question that Jordi touched upon. Why would international players come to the NBA instead of staying in Europe ? Couldnt the Euroleagues dominate basketball quality by just keeping their best big men over there ?

The come because of money. Pure and simple. Does anyone really think that if the pay was higher in Europe that all these players would face the culture shock of coming over here to the NBA ? Heck, even if the pay is close in Europe, because of different tax rules and the tax free perks they can get , they might stay over there. There is no salary cap. No limits of practice. The games and season are shorter, so careers can be extended. You can make a lot of arguments about advantages of playing in the Euroleague.

Right now the edge is to the NBA because of the money. Which means the NBA has risk on multiple sides. If we continue to subsidize international basketball and they grow economically, they may be able to financially support salaries comparable to ours. If we continue to help Euroleague grow their brand., Euroleague could easily supercede the NBA (if they havent already) as the dominant league outside the USA and money that the NBA hopes will be available for NBA rights will go to Euroleague . Finally, if the NBA stumbles in the USA financially at all, our ability to pay higher salaries might decline or disappear, propelling the Euroleague to a dominant position.

I personally, and I know Im not alone in the NBA with this perspective, believe we face a risk of not getting the job done here in the USA. That rather than trying to help Euroleague dreams come true, we should focus on helping NBA dreams come true. Its great that we are building basketball fans around Europe and the Rest of the World. I would rather build basketball fans in the USA. Its great that in the future someone will come from Dnepreprost or Monte Carlo and say they became an NBA player because they saw Tony Parker play an exhibition in France, or Shaun Livingston in Moscow. I would rather hear stories about kids becoming NBA fans in Louisville, Lexington, Boise, Tampa, Cincinatti, Kansas City and other non NBA cities because they went to see an exhibition game in their city.

Believe it or not the financial future of theNBA depends on 500k viewers on average for an NBA game on our cable TV partners. If we add 500k viewers on average for an ESPN or TNT regular season game, we are heroes. If we lose 500k average viewers, we are zeroes, hoping the Euroleague buys contracts of our expensive players from u
s.

I know all of this reads like a prospectus for an IPO, outlining all the potential business risks, but these are business elements that we need to take a closer look at if the NBA is going to excel as a business going forward.

A funny thing happened at media day for the Mavs this year. The players were excited as could be. Most of the media was fired up about the Mavs getting back on the court. But there was a segment of the media that wasnt quite as excited as the rest.

The print media guys there looked like they were worn out. Anyone who follows the business of media knows there are changes a plenty happening at Newspapers across the country. Our local paper, The Dallas Morning News offered early retirement packages across the board and the sports department had some takers. Thats probably good for them, but what about the rest of the news staff and the topics they cover ?

Of course the news, sports or otherwise, knows no boundaries. There may be fewer people in the newsroom but the same number of games, events and what have yous are still being played and presented. The guys who work in print who cover the Mavs didnt say so, and this may be my prejudices coming through, but the look on the faces of several from the Morning News seemed to reflect that trying to cover the Mavs along with their other responsibilities was going to make things difficult on them.

Sports teams have always had a love hate relationship with the media. We both need each other to prosper. Sometimes we are all on the same page and its love and kisses. Sometimes we are not, and its glares and turned backs. But somehow we have managed to carry on, knowing that there were always readers out there that we both wanted as customers that would somehow push us towards the middle.

Im the first to admit that I pushed, prodded and made every attempt to game the media to try to present the Mavs and our players in the best possible light. I am the protector of the Mavs brand, and the person responsible for making sure our fans and customers get what they need to stay fans and customers. This year, for the first time, Im going to have to make adjustments in how i deal with local (emphasis on local) media members. Particularly from the local newspapers.

It was no accident that Mike Monroe of the San Antonio Paper was at our media rather than following the Spurs in Europe. Dallas is a cheap trip. France is not. Dallas hotels can run under 50 bucks, French hotelrooms with bathrooms and phones do not.

I, along with owners of every other sports team, other than maybe NFL owners, are going to have to recognize that we no longer have the full attention of our beatwriters and the columnist who focuses on our sport.

They may also be covering high school lacrosse or field hockey or college football with a quick jaunt to pick up a quote from the girl who set the Texas State 100 yard dash record this week. They may be asked to go interview the ex girlfriend of Terrel Owens former barber to see if she has any good scoop on why TO changed his hair style after the big Eagles game. (Did i just regress into an old habit….oops .

Money plays for newspapers these days. I have to recognize it and try to make the lives of the writers who follow the Mavs a little easier and the paths to information a little wider. I have to make sure that we make it as in expensive as possible to cover the Mavs. Maybe its time they change their rule of not flying on the team plane.

I want as much coverage of the Mavs as possible. I know all sports teams are going to have to work harder to get it.

Now about those media consultants who are trying to convince newspapers what sports they should cover and how much coverage should be given to each. Should I be nice to them as well ?

I guess I will ask my new best friends at the paper.

From the Toronto Star:

WATERLOO, Ont.-As if integrating nine new players into the Raptors lineup isn’t difficult enough, the coaching staff is also working around a formidable impediment to a productive training camp – the NBA’s restrictions on practice time.Teams are allowed precisely three hours of court time daily, which the Raptors are dividing into two 1 1/2-hour sessions this week.

League rules also say that only one of the workouts can include defensive contact, which doesn’t help a team attempting to improve on near-league-worst defensive stats. And the list of restrictions goes on.

But if you’re wondering why you haven’t heard anyone criticize the rules, consider that Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was fined $100,000 (U.S.) for speaking the following three sentences.”It’s part of the hypocrisy of the NBA,” said Cuban in 2004. “People complain about fundamentals, but when you want to practise, you can’t practise. It’s crazy.”

For the rest of the story

There has been a lot of discussion about the new NBA ball. Some players dont like it. Some said they will deal with it. The league says get used to it. So why the clamor ?

Simple.

The old game ball had grain that you could feel. When you shot the ball, you could feel the grain and it helped establish “touch” and control by your fingers and fingertips on the ball. As a ball was used more often, the grain wore down some, but never disappeared. In fact, as a leather ball wore down, the grain gave way. This “breaking in ” process seemed to make the grain even more important and easier to control. When it got to the right balance of grain and the seams wearing down, it got to a feel that made it easier for many of the players to shoot.

Personally, I loved to play with and shoot the NBA balls over any other. There was no question any ball of the Mavs rack, other than a brand new leather ball, was easier to shoot than one of the random balls at any gym. Even setting aside that gyms kept balls over inflated, and NBA balls had the right amount of air, NBA leather balls were always easier to shoot.

So why the change ? Because as much as guys like the old leather ball, the wearing down of the leather meant that every ball was different in some subtle sense. Teams had to agree on a ball before the game. The captains of both teams would bounce the ball, play with it, squeeze it, all to make sure it was a “good ball” Ive seen games where everyone screamed that the ball “sucked “. It didnt bounce enough. Or was too smooth. With both teams requesting and agreeing to change it at half time. Put another way, the difference from ball to ball was so great, that the game ball was marked with a pen and put aside on the game table so no one could switch it.

That alone is enough of a reason to change.

So are the new balls the answer ? Im not sure. They are definitely harder to shoot and have that outdoor ball feel. What kind of feel is that ? Its bouncier and has that “you cant break me or change me , im designed to be indestructable and never change feel” that outdoor balls have.. Because there isnt the tactile feel of the leather grain, it feels like they tried to compensate by making the ball material somewhat sticky. Without the stickiness, the ball seems like it would feel like a bald, heavily used outdoor ball feels.

The ball also feels bouncier. Not compared to an out of the box , just inflated leather NBA ball. It feels bouncier compared to the balls that were broken in and used in games. Will this translate into a lot of long, wierd rebounds. Im guessing, but so far it looks like yes. The things dont wear down the same way as the leather balls seemed to. So far, they always play like they are new. Thats going to be wierd to some guys.

Will it all have an impact on the games ? I think it will at the beginning of the season. I think there will be missed dunks. I think there will be missed shots and ugly rebounds bouncing wierd ways and off of guys hands.

I think guys who use a lot of spin off the backboard to finish layups will have some problems because the basic physics of this ball have some differences from the last balls. I think of the few baseball passes we see over the course of a year, we will see some sliders and curveballs thrown in because the seams dont wear down like a leather ball.

On the flipside, guys who shoot the ball better with the new ball, and there will be a few, will gain an advantage. They wont have to adjust to the ball every game like they did with an old leather NBA ball.

Did the NBA handle the introduction of the new ball the right way ?

Its too early in the season to get fined