Are the SEC’s S&M copyright rules pre-empted by federal law?

The Attorney General of Tennessee recently opined that the SEC was within its rights to limit media access to college sporting events to those news organizations who were willing to sign away large sections of their intellectual property rights as part of a credentialing scheme.It’s a neat idea, and I’m sure it would be expedient for the SEC if the world really did work that way, but I’m afraid the Attorney General’s opinion raises more copyright questions than it answers—not the least of those questions being whether the SEC’s credentialing scheme is actually preempted by federal copyright law.Preemption is a doctrine that says, when there’s a disagreement between state laws and federal laws, the federal law wins.