The internet, social media and any form of online grassroots activity seems destined to cause irreparable tension between copyright holders and online creatives and sharers. Last week, the founders of Swedish BitTorrent tracking site The Pirate Bay were found guilty of “being accessories to crimes against copyright law”, and now face jail.
Ever since Metallica’s war on Napster – an almighty PR cock-up in which drummer Lars Ulrich came to embody the music industry’s gung-ho and ill-informed approach to matters of copyright in the internet era – music copyright has been at the forefront of digital copyright law. But it’s not just music.
The world of football also walks the line between intellectual property protection and an over-zealous approach which can really backfire in terms of public relations. Watford fanzine site Blind, Stupid and Desperate was shut down thanks to a cease and desist letter from DataCo, the company which protects copyright for the Premier League and the Football League. Its offence was to list a fixture between Watford and Leicester City.
The latest victim of a DataCo witch-hunt subject of a DataCo letter is FootyTweets, a football updates service for Twitter provided by Ollie Parsley. Ollie has been threatened with closure because of his use of club logos (which the leagues, ludicrously, have jurisdiction over) and league logos, and because of the service’s live match updates.
Fair use
Net-gen kids like me are always banging on about fair use, but it’s a useful starting point for this issue. The question of club logos has been newsworthy recently, when DataCo’s rabid enforcement personnel targeted Daryl Grove’s footballing behemoth The Offside.
While I believe football club logos should be fair game, that’s not really the point. They are copyrighted materials and as such DataCo has the right to enforce that copyright. I just think it shouldn’t. But everybody knows the logos are subject to copyright, and although it’s wrong, it’s the way it is. As such, it’s hardly a surprise that Ollie got a letter.
But it’s the crackdown on live updates which is not only most interesting, but absolutely wrong. We’re already prevented from taking photographs inside England’s football grounds – fans are just about getting used to that. Now, though, we’re told that the action itself is copyrighted. What a load of nonsense. As Chris Applegate points out in Ollie’s comments section, DataCo might be overstepping its remit here: “Goals, sendings off and other match incidents are matters of fact in the public domain, not expressions of ideas covered under copyright”.
Bad PR
The problem for the Premier League and the Football League is that their association with DataCo is increasingly soiling their image. Much like the music industry back in the Napster days, the authorities are choosing to see the internet as a threat rather than the incredibly powerful media partner it could be.
Firstly, making an enemy of the web is a pretty dumb thing to do, and football is lucky that it is in a position to pay no regard to public opinion. That’s the strength of cultural importance. Regardless, why irritate people when you could be making friends? Seems bizarre to me, but that’s life. Unfortunately for the Premier League and Football League, the fans appear united on this matter and bloggers, increasingly the subject of traditional media attention, are always ready to get on board with these issues.
This whole story also completely ignores the positive results of keeping an open mind. Ollie mentions in his blog post that he drives a decent amount of traffic to the clubs. But that doesn’t seem to matter. Every use of every logo is free advertising – but that doesn’t seem to matter either. As for banning publication of fixtures, I think that’s bordering on the insane. Surely a body trying to flog overpriced tickets to matches should welcome the attention?
Sooner or later, the Premier League will have to look at its PR. But it’s in such a position of strength that it looks a distant possibility at the moment.
Ongoing tensions
The Premier League in particular is notorious for treating fans badly, and it doesn’t stop at copyright enforcement. Ludicrous ticket prices, Game 39, the appalling state of refereeing and the constant movement of fixtures to inappropriate kick off times all add up to an organisation that doesn’t care about its stakeholders and, despite the dominance of over-the-top marketing speak, doesn’t care about its image.
Update
Ollie’s had another cease and desist letter, this time from the driving forces (lolz) behind Formula 1. Again, the primary issue is use of their logos – we all know this is illegal, so regardless of the rights and wrongs, using them is never going to be allowed – and there is also a claim over real world events, in this case lap times and race times.
It seems, perhaps unsurprisingly, F1 owns those times. But is it really in its interest to stifle conversation?
copyright, football, Twitter
Thanks for writing about the FootyTweets saga. I should have expected that I’d get a notice about the logos. But as you say, I am sending them a considerable amount of traffic and these users could be buying tickets or merchandise. This is all free marketing for them. So now that their official logos aren’t seen on the FootyTweets site and the Twitter accounts means that less new people will follow them, as the logo I am now using is nothing to do with the official logo they would instantly recognise. That therefore has an obvious knock-on effect to the free marketing they are getting.
Let me know if you have any further questions or feedback
Ollie
@ollieparsley
[...] a joke, first they shut down a site because it mentioned a football fixture and now they’re going after a Twitter [...]
I guess the simple reason they don’t want fans to put the information, or the badges on the internet is because they (the authorities) sell them to media agencies and the like, and if orn’ry folk are not paying for them, why should (for example) the BBC, or the Newspapers.
It’s just a simple money thing. Morality, recognition of the benefit of free advertising, or of the social aspects mean absolutely cock all to them. Money money money.
It’s totally bizarre in all other respects for a competition organiser to refuse to allow people to detail their competions fixtures, results, factlets and the like. As you suggest, they feel they don’t need “us”. Perhaps they don’t at the moment, but they will. They can’t stay ring-fenced and isolated in their commercial bubble forever. I suppose they just don’t actually care for the sport as a whole, they don’t value anything to which they can’t attach a price. Things like loyalty, passion, interest, support, enthusiasm of the “customer base” are only of value if they can extract something from it. IF they can’t get get money off you for some aspect of your support, they will shut you out completely.