Churches should be able to air Super Bowl: Senator

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal copyright law should be changed so churches as well as bars can show football's Super Bowl on big screen televisions, a senior senator said on Sunday shortly before the championship game.

Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who also has been inquiring about the National Football League's handling of a spying scandal involving this year's Super Bowl contenders the New England Patriots, criticized the NFL for pulling the plug on church Super Bowl parties.

"There's absolutely no reason why you ought to be able to have a big screen in a bar but not in church, where a church is having a social event," Specter said on CNN's "Late Edition."

The Washington Post said last week that some churches had cancelled their traditional Super Bowl parties after the NFL sent a letter to an Indiana church warning it not to show the game between the Patriots and the New York Giants on a giant video screen.

According to the Post, the NFL bans public exhibitions of its games on television screens larger than 55 inches, citing copyright law protecting its games, but exempts sports bars.

"I think when the NFL sent out letters to churches saying, you can't have a social event, they sort of lost touch with their duty of accountability to the American people," Specter said on CNN.

He said he plans to introduce legislation on Monday to change federal copyright law granting an exemption for organizations using telecasts at "social events," such as churches.

Specter also said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who spoke out about a football spy scandal last week, had not produced a valid reason for why the NFL destroyed videotapes the Patriots had made of games to study opponents' defensive signals.

The league fined the team, which entered the Super Bowl with an unbeaten record, and their coach and took away the Patriots' first-round draft pick this season after they were found to have broken NFL rules by using the videotape to try and steal defensive signals.