By siding with Optus, the courts have told the AFL that it needs to get with the times rather than expect special treatment. The AFL has a long history of expecting special treatment when it comes to broadcast rights. Internet radio listeners have probably already discovered that you can’t listen to AFL games via the online simulcasts of stations such as Triple M and 3AW, except via Telstra (although there are ways around this, if you do your research).

Even back in the 1980s, the AFL would scroll messages across the bottom of Channel Seven's footy replay warning you that you weren't allowed to record it with your VCR. The AFL’s efforts to block TV Now are just as laughable. Technology is changing and for once the law is on the side of viewers.

The media industry has been dragged kicking and screaming into the technological age, slowly coming to terms with format-shifting and time-shifting - concepts which offer new opportunities when they’re embraced rather than fought. Now place-shifting has had its day in court and the judge has found in favour of viewers. This fight isn’t over yet, but if Optus loses then all of our rights to time, format and place-shift will be under threat and we’ll slide back into the bad old days of media giants dictating what we watch and when we watch it.

What do you think? Has the AFL been wronged or does it need to accept the verdict?