OUFC Gav
Junior Member
www.mincheryfarmweb.co.uk
Posts: 94 
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Post by OUFC Gav on Sept 2, 2010 15:39:15 GMT
Had (multiple) contact(s) from the league's licensing company threatening legal action for copyright infringement. Can't have fixtures, can't have any club or competition logos, can't have any photos that might show football, any other photos might be forbidden too...
I would either have to pay for licenses (and get written authority from each individual logo right holder), or link to one of the corporate 'fan' website chains.
Not sure what I'm going to do, but can't afford the stupidly expensive fees. For now the useful content in my site will be going missing tonight or tomorrow :-(
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Post by grb on Sept 2, 2010 15:43:50 GMT
What a load of nonsense! Good luck getting things sorted Gav.
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Post by m on Sept 2, 2010 15:53:45 GMT
Sickening.
I sincerely hope your good work will be available again without being (too!) compromised!
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Post by SteMerritt on Sept 2, 2010 15:59:37 GMT
It is for reasons like that I got out of the OUFC website business.
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Post by danabrey on Sept 2, 2010 16:49:15 GMT
Wow, I remember discussing this problem on TiU with you with Yellow Pride and that was 4-5 years ago. Still haven't given up being petty bitches then I see. Can't help thinking there must be a loophole somewhere.
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Post by Gary Baldi on Sept 2, 2010 17:50:48 GMT
It's pathetic, but totally unsurprising. By all means ensure the logos aren't being misued, but especially as I'm assuming you make no money off the pictures, it comes across as petty and vindictive.
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Post by slappy on Sept 2, 2010 18:18:48 GMT
I see Southampton are only allowing official match photos to be used this season. So one paper had Roy of the Rovers style cartoons, another used subbuteo to reenact action , and another used 1920's match photos. And I think the Sun fixture list calls them South Coast club.
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Post by Lone Gunman on Sept 2, 2010 20:32:39 GMT
How ridiculous. I wasn't aware the league was so stringent in its enforcement of licensing or even that it had licensing on half the things gav has mentioned. How can you license a fixture list, its a fixture list FFS?
Saying that, my old man almost had his camera confiscated by a steward at burton because he wasn't an official photographer and that was when we were in the conference!
Its pathetic, petty, and targets people who have no interest in the misuse of the material in question.
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Post by boris on Sept 2, 2010 20:44:30 GMT
The copyright rules of the Football League, especially regarding the fixture list, are draconian and largely unenforcable. An intellectual property lawyer I know reckons that the League would lose any case brought, but the trouble is defending such a case would cost a fortune and take years. They're not new, though: I was almost thrown out of Walsall's ground in 1999 for taking photos without a licence. The problem is that fans' websites are easy targets because the authorities know that we have neither the dosh nor the expertise to fight our case, whereas the established media are happy to pay the licence fees because as far as they're concerned the costs aren't exhorbitant. It would probably require someone like the Guardian or the BBC to be taken to court by the FL before this bollocks was thrown out.
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Post by Lone Gunman on Sept 2, 2010 21:06:20 GMT
Threatening to chuck honest fans out of grounds or confiscating their cameras because of licencing is insane IMO. Its not like bill bloggs is going to do the league out of money by publishing them in the paper or flogging copies is it.
Thinking on a bit, how come no one got chucked out of wembley for snapping away?
Presumably under these regulations, if you happened to be somehow watching the game without paying to get in, if for example you had a house which overlooked the ground or had climed on some structure above the stand, you would technically be in violation of licencing laws? If not, and licencing isn't covered in the price of admission, then how is it logical not to charge fans to watch the game but to do them for making a record of it?
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Post by Out of the gloom on Sept 3, 2010 8:53:31 GMT
Sad and pathetic that the Football League employ some jobs worth to go after the small things (no offence intended) when you consider the amount of big intellectual property infringement (illegal streaming of matches) that goes on.
If you were misappropriating the names and logos, or gaining financially from the website then they’d have a point.
Would like to think they could be satisfied with, and indeed offer advice of, a few modifications. For example; some kind of disclaimer at the bottom of each page and embedding any logos as linked from the owners (clubs) official site; i.e. not hosting on your server.
After all any links to ‘official sites’ will direct traffic back to them.
You have my sympathy’s. Good luck whatever you do.
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Post by Boogaloo on Sept 3, 2010 10:11:18 GMT
It's totally pathetic of the Football League. I seem to remember one website (I think it might have been the Tony Kempster one), which like yours wasn't done for profit, but purely for the love of football. His fixture list section featured an email from the Football Legal department saying the same sort of thing, and that if he wished to purchase a licence it woul cost EIGHT-THOUSAND POUNDS!
What they are really doing is biting the hands that feeds them by penalising fan sites. I could understand if you were making money from it, but it's totally pathetic. I reckon you should take a PDF of the letter sent to you and post in the Fixtures section so all fans can see that w@nkers the Football L£ague really are.
Alteratively a cheeky way round it would be to rename the teams in a way that you still know who they are:-
e.g.Ocksford United v Oldershott
Hackrington Stanley v Talkie United
Berry v Rovveram etc.
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Post by KidInTheRiot on Sept 3, 2010 10:30:10 GMT
It's totally pathetic of the Football League. I seem to remember one website (I think it might have been the Tony Kempster one), which like yours wasn't done for profit, but purely for the love of football. His fixture list section featured an email from the Football Legal department saying the same sort of thing, and that if he wished to purchase a licence it woul cost EIGHT-THOUSAND POUNDS! What they are really doing is biting the hands that feeds them by penalising fan sites. I could understand if you were making money from it, but it's totally pathetic. I reckon you should take a PDF of the letter sent to you and post in the Fixtures section so all fans can see that w@nkers the Football L£ague really are. Alteratively a cheeky way round it would be to rename the teams in a way that you still know who they are:- e.g.Ocksford United v Oldershott Hackrington Stanley v Talkie United Berry v Rovveram etc. Or Oxford Wanderes v Aldershot City Bury Heat v Rotherham Bears |
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Post by SteMerritt on Sept 3, 2010 10:52:37 GMT
Change the fixture list to 'my planned drinking schedule', and do something similar to the following... 12 Oct: Going away to Aldershot for a beer 19 Oct: Beer at home with my mate from Rotherham 26 Oct: Planned trip for a beer at Brentford 1 Nov: My mate from Northampton is coming here etc....  |
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Post by boris on Sept 3, 2010 11:17:27 GMT
Sad and pathetic that the Football League employ some jobs worth to go after the small things (no offence intended) when you consider the amount of big intellectual property infringement (illegal streaming of matches) that goes on. To be accurate, they don't employ some jobsworth for this, they outsource to an agency called Net Result ( www.nr-online.com/) for which they doubtless have to pay a fortune, and presumably the agency has to justify this fee by producing results. I remember a few years ago a Southampton website was forced offline by the FL because it reproduced the fixtures without permission. I hope you can ride this out, Gav. Meanwhile, check out this sadly out of date site (Free the Fixtures). |
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Post by danabrey on Sept 3, 2010 13:06:17 GMT
Change the fixture list to 'my planned drinking schedule', and do something similar to the following... 12 Oct: Going away to Aldershot for a beer 19 Oct: Beer at home with my mate from Rotherham 26 Oct: Planned trip for a beer at Brentford 1 Nov: My mate from Northampton is coming here etc.... Love this |
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Post by The Resurrection on Sept 3, 2010 20:13:11 GMT
Thats f**king pathetic that is.
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OUFC Gav
Junior Member
www.mincheryfarmweb.co.uk
Posts: 94
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Post by OUFC Gav on Sept 3, 2010 21:07:03 GMT
It's totally pathetic of the Football League. I seem to remember one website (I think it might have been the Tony Kempster one), which like yours wasn't done for profit, but purely for the love of football. His fixture list section featured an email from the Football Legal department saying the same sort of thing, and that if he wished to purchase a licence it woul cost EIGHT-THOUSAND POUNDS! What they are really doing is biting the hands that feeds them by penalising fan sites. I could understand if you were making money from it, but it's totally pathetic. I reckon you should take a PDF of the letter sent to you and post in the Fixtures section so all fans can see that w@nkers the Football L£ague really are. They now include a copyright notice on the correspondence forbidding copying, distribution or publication of the contents. If it wasn't so heavy handed it would be funny. Their desperate attempts to monetize their 'product' and keep image control are just going to drive fans away. They obviously want a bland, sanitised version of the game, just like the premiershi*. I'd love to challenge their pathetic stance, but they know they have too much legal resource and cash to back them, with way too much risk for me. Hosting and running MFW is a labour of love, and costs me money. To expect me to pay thousands in licensing fees, and the other overheads of getting image rights for club logos, is just ludicrous. |
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Post by Lone Gunman on Sept 3, 2010 21:26:12 GMT
Even CLUB LOGOS are the property of the league. I had no idea the rot went that deep, it is truly pathetic and scandalous.
Who actually gets all the money they make from this, that's what i want to know.
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Post by Cutteslowe Chris on Sept 3, 2010 22:45:50 GMT
Sad and pathetic that the Football League employ some jobs worth to go after the small things (no offence intended) when you consider the amount of big intellectual property infringement (illegal streaming of matches) that goes on. To be accurate, they don't employ some jobsworth for this, they outsource to an agency called Net Result ( www.nr-online.com/) for which they doubtless have to pay a fortune, and presumably the agency has to justify this fee by producing results. I remember a few years ago a Southampton website was forced offline by the FL because it reproduced the fixtures without permission. I hope you can ride this out, Gav. Meanwhile, check out this sadly out of date site (Free the Fixtures). can someone tell me please.If this agency approached yellows forum for information,ie e-mail address would they have to provide it.thanks in advance. |
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