Not that you'll see it on this site, oh no. Nope, we had our fingers burnt once before where that sort of thing's concerned and we won't be falling into that trap again.
It was back in June 2007 when we gazed in awe at the fixtures that had just been announced by the FA for the opening weeks of the new Premier League season. How we drooled at the prospect of all those top teams waiting to do battle again after so many weeks of Summer inactivity.
We couldn't wait to share that initial batch of fixtures with you, so we did the only decent thing we could think of: we published them on our site. That's what set the alarm off in the FA boardroom.
Within a couple of days, we were contacted by a company who shall remain nameless (for reasons which will become clear) who, it was claimed, were acting on behalf of the aforementioned governing body. They said they'd noticed we'd published details of the opening weeks' fixtures, and as we'd done so without asking for permission (or paying the extortionate sum of money they were asking for) we should remove them from our site or face the consequences.
As we didn't want a gang of henchmen banging on our door demanding to be let in so they could detach a certain dangly collection of objects from our bodies with a blunt knife, we agreed to do what they said.
And apparently we weren't the only ones. I've been on other blog sites that were also contacted for this so-called breach of the law, and they had to face the same unreasonably heavy-handed attitude as well.
Now at this point I could surely go on for hours about why you have to pay thousands of pounds for a license to use the FA's fixture details when various newspapers and TV companies are displaying them to a worldwide audience of millions, but I won't. I'll leave that for you to contemplate.
Instead, as we always try to provide the best news service we can for you, our loyal visitors, here ARE the key fixtures from today's draw for the Fourth Round of the FA Cup using as much detail as possible without crossing the boundaries of illegality:
- The Gooners v That team Stanley Matthews played for at the end of his career or The Magpies from St. James' Park
- Dave Whelan's relegation-cheating JJB-ers v a team from West London that call themselves The BluesThe team that used to be supported by Eric Morecambe or Rafa's Rotating Reds v A club that went from the Fourth Division to the First almost as quickly as they went from the First Divison to the Fourth or Yet another non-league team that were formed as a result of a merger of two local sides that haven't reached this round before
- Ronaldo & Co v Ossie's Army or Steve Coppell's blue-and-white-army
- Pompey v The only team you know in English football that wears green shirts
- The club that thinks it can sue its way out of trouble v The team that gave them such an inferiority complex by signing a couple of Argentinean stooges who inadvertantly caught the wrong train and ended up in East London or Manchester City. (Bugger...)
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10 comments:
I'm pretty sure that cup draws don't come under the same stringent licensing rules the league fixtures do.
Apparently the rules were put in place so the league could make money back from the pools companies - but it seems ridiculous to enforce it at this level. That said the League or FA probably don't give a crap - but the third party organisation that gets paid to protect their "intellectual property" does.
We had a similar issue with FIFA for the last World Cup when we did our "pull-out" (http://www.the-onion-bag.com/worldcup) within 48 hours we got the call telling us to strip any imagery of the trophy or the official logo from our site - no mention of the full list of venues and fixtures which we also had, just the images - on pain of site closure. We dutifully removed them and did a rapid redesign. We grumbled about our sleepy backwater being intruded by the heavy mob - a week later we welcomed a quarter of a million visitors to the site (thank you Heidi).
So it seems international tournaments and cup competitions are fine - it's just the league that they get snooty about. Interestingly, you can list results but you can't list fixtures.
That said, a round up of fixtures for review purposes should be classed as "fair use". Though I for one wouldn't be too happy trying it on ;)
I'm not at all familiar with British law. But in America, all statistics, fixtures, and scores (but not detailed descriptions of the games) are considered public domain. This has been upheld numerous times as the major sport leagues have tried to sue yahoo, espn, etc. for running fantasy leagues using player names and statistics.
I suppose if your site were written from the US, they would have no legal recourse. But I suspect they have little in the UK and are just being bullies because the could out spend you in court.
Chris, the EU have already said the League can't charge for them but until someone challenges a court decision made in the fifties they can carry on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_DataCo
http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1671699,00.html
Seems logical, you wouldn't want people all over the world interacting and talking about your league. That's a great business model.
Interesting what you say about The Onion Bag using imagery of the World Cup, Sp3ktor. It's the same principle though - surely the likes of your site or ours is only giving greater publicity to the end product, i.e. The World Cup or the Premier League. What harm are we doing?!?
Chris B, I have a plan: at the beginning of next season, I'll pass you the Premier League fixtures along with my Blogger name and password. All you need to do is log in as me, publish the list...
What's the worst that could happen? I get taken to international commerce court? Ha!
I wouldn't be surprised if, in some cases, more money is spent stopping people publishing copyrighted material, of this nature, than is made by selling it in the first place. Some things are really hard to commodify.
There's no more damning indictment of football's current mania than the fact that the authorities are willing to sue people for publicising future events run by those same authorities.
What other branch of the entertaiment industry (which is what football is part of) does that? Would I be sued for telling you that Hot Chip play Norwich UEA on the 20th of Februrary? Of course not. So why should I be sued for telling you that Norwich City play Barnsley in a game of Association Football at Carrow Road on the 23rd of February?
Absolute madness.
Chris I'll make sure to publish the fixture list next year :)
You'll have my whole-hearted support if you do, Chrissy!
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