Portal talk:Football/Fixtures

Copyright

I hate to start this discussion again, but aren't future football fixtures even more likely to be held under copyright than the league tables?? Frankie Roberto 20:06, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Frankie, i think that you mean well, but i hate to say that your fear is misplaced. The reason why the actual fixtures are the same is because if you took the results FROM LOOKING AT EVERY GAME, added up the points, and put them in the table. Then, if you counted correctly, it would always be the same as any other fixtures for the permier league the world over.

Now, i will for the sake of Vacuousness, explain how it works. For instance, recently, Manchester City v Manchester United played, and City won 3 - 1. Now, say - for instance, the Premier league came on the site, and saw "Man City 3 - 1 Manchester united" then the first thing which they would certainly NOT think would be "this data must be copied from us". What i am saying is, the results, as i have, repeatedly said, are PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE, they aren't copyrighted because;

1. The club names ARE COPYRIGHTS THEMSELVES, which we are allowed fair use of.
2. The PLAYER NAMES are COPYRIGHTED INDIVIDUALLY BY THE PLAYER, OR BY FIFA
3. The results could be found if you went 10 miles away from any football stadium.

Still, if you wish to, again, flag work up as copyright infringement, my advice would be to firstly, be advised by the corporation you think is being infringed upon. E.g. email the FA, FIFA, or the Premier league. If indeed fixtures are copyrighted, then sanity as i know it is being scraped from the bottom of a minescule barrel. Spum 09:21, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi Spum. Sorry to cause any aggro, I think the work you've done on the football portal is great, and I really hope that my fears are mis-placed. My concern was not with the publishing of football results, but of the publishing of forthcoming football fixtures. Doing some quick research, it seems that quite a few fan sites have, unfortunately, received letters from the FA over their publishing of forthcoming football fixtures. Eg the letter posted to BSAD site:

"We write on behalf of the Football Data Co Limited which is the appointed licensee of the FA Premier League, the Football League, the Scottish Premier League and the Scottish Football League ("the Leagues") in respect of the licensing of certain intellectual property rights of the Leagues, including those in the fixture lists for this season August 2005 - May 2006 ("the Fixture Lists"), for use by third parties.

We have noticed that your website http://www.bsad.org/0405/reports/fixtures.html is displaying Football Fixtures. In order to display the Fixture Lists you must obtain the necessary licence from the Press Association."

...

"The Football League won a case in 1959 which awarded them copyright in their fixtures. Since this time they have marketed their fixtures and in more recent times additional data to go with the fixtures. This activity is 45 years old and therefore not something which is new."

"You can purchase a licence in two ways. The first is with the permission of the club and is called becoming a "Nominated Fanzine" the cost of this is £1.00 + VAT. This scheme was put in place to enable sites such as yours to be able to use the fixtures. The second route also requires the permission of the club and involves the payment of a £266 + VAT fee where Nominated Fanzine status is not being awarded."

source

Frankie Roberto 10:10, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Again, this is UK law. Bawolff asked the Wikimedia legal experts and they are saying it is OK [1] so IMHO we are on the safe side. --Deprifry|+T+ 10:30, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Cool. Let's just hope that the UK law can change then... Frankie Roberto 10:50, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

yeah, I think the foundation really only cares about US laws. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:11, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

All content on wikinews, suposably has to be reusable for free. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:13, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, we're using the license, and it's not for a commercial purpose!

The site is displaying upcoming fixtures without purchasing the appropriate license. Please remove the fixtures immediately to prevent further action being taken.

Simple, all we do is add the disclaimer to their site at the bottom of the fixtures thing. But, we aren't breaking the law because we're linking to the correct license! By the way; fixtures are different, because they contain the names and information relating to the upcoming matches which are big-money makers. So, all we do i propose, is make a link on the fixtures table, which contains links to ALL COPYRIGHTS relating to football club names and the leage they're in! :-) Spum 09:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)