azabob
04-05-2009, 06:34 PM
From the AGE website.
The AFL has given a bunch of self-confessed football loving 'IT geeks' seven days notice to remove any references to the AFL, images or the mention of associated football league clubs from their footy blog.
The blog contestedfooty.com - set up by seven footy-obsessed students from Deakin and Monash universities - provides commentary on matches, players and footy news.
One of the site's founders, 21-year-old student James Rose, told The Age the group received a letter from the AFL's legal counsel demanding they stop using AFL intellectual property, stop displaying AFL images without their consent and provide evidence that they have ceased to do so by this Wednesday.
"To me that's a bit ridiculous, I'm not sure on the exact legality of it, we're completely content with taking down images and we've put a lot of work in and then to turn around and say we can't use their (the football club's) name, what are we supposed to say the red, black and white team?" Mr Rose said.
"If we can't mention club names, then what can we do?"
"And there's hundreds of sites that mention clubs."
"There's a group of seven of us and we're just a bunch of mates at university, mostly IT geeks, we were very aware of the thought of copyrights, if my mates have used an (copyright) image then it's purely accidental and I just didn't think it warranted that sort of message," he said.
Mr Rose said they were given seven days to remove any references to the AFL and relevant club names.
"They've gone the whole hog, you can't use the term AFL on your site... heavy-handed I thought," Mr Rose said
"We obviously can't afford to go to court, so it will be interesting to see what happens."
Mr Rose said the site gets between 2000 and 3000 views per day and they do manage to receive some advertising revenue, but nothing to make a living out of.
"Yesterday I spent the day running around trying to get advice instead of going to class. I just don't understand it, it's clearly just a hobby and we've got Google ads up, but they haven't even covered our costs of running the sites," Mr Rose said.
"I mean if they want to sue us via our profits, they can have the negative $20."
AFL media manager Patrick Keane said the site received the letter because they cannot use any AFL or team intellectual property.
"It's something that we regularly follow with any area... websites, such as media outlets, selling AFL photographs attached to a commercial sponsor without the permission of the player concerned," Mr Keane said.
"So it's use of anything that's got an AFL logo, be it club guernsey or AFL images."
"People can do it but they can't attach any commercial gains to it," Mr Keane said
Mr Keane said any mention of club names are permissible in an editorial sense.
"For editorial use there is no issue, but again for anything attached to commercial relationship, no," Mr Keane said.
"It's exactly the same as any organisation would do to protect its commercial right."
Up to 36 submissions have been made to a Senate Committee about the restricted use of reporting of sporting news, after concerns Australians were being denied coverage of sporting events.
The Senate committee will report their findings to the Senate on May 14.
http://www.contestedfooty.com/
The AFL has given a bunch of self-confessed football loving 'IT geeks' seven days notice to remove any references to the AFL, images or the mention of associated football league clubs from their footy blog.
The blog contestedfooty.com - set up by seven footy-obsessed students from Deakin and Monash universities - provides commentary on matches, players and footy news.
One of the site's founders, 21-year-old student James Rose, told The Age the group received a letter from the AFL's legal counsel demanding they stop using AFL intellectual property, stop displaying AFL images without their consent and provide evidence that they have ceased to do so by this Wednesday.
"To me that's a bit ridiculous, I'm not sure on the exact legality of it, we're completely content with taking down images and we've put a lot of work in and then to turn around and say we can't use their (the football club's) name, what are we supposed to say the red, black and white team?" Mr Rose said.
"If we can't mention club names, then what can we do?"
"And there's hundreds of sites that mention clubs."
"There's a group of seven of us and we're just a bunch of mates at university, mostly IT geeks, we were very aware of the thought of copyrights, if my mates have used an (copyright) image then it's purely accidental and I just didn't think it warranted that sort of message," he said.
Mr Rose said they were given seven days to remove any references to the AFL and relevant club names.
"They've gone the whole hog, you can't use the term AFL on your site... heavy-handed I thought," Mr Rose said
"We obviously can't afford to go to court, so it will be interesting to see what happens."
Mr Rose said the site gets between 2000 and 3000 views per day and they do manage to receive some advertising revenue, but nothing to make a living out of.
"Yesterday I spent the day running around trying to get advice instead of going to class. I just don't understand it, it's clearly just a hobby and we've got Google ads up, but they haven't even covered our costs of running the sites," Mr Rose said.
"I mean if they want to sue us via our profits, they can have the negative $20."
AFL media manager Patrick Keane said the site received the letter because they cannot use any AFL or team intellectual property.
"It's something that we regularly follow with any area... websites, such as media outlets, selling AFL photographs attached to a commercial sponsor without the permission of the player concerned," Mr Keane said.
"So it's use of anything that's got an AFL logo, be it club guernsey or AFL images."
"People can do it but they can't attach any commercial gains to it," Mr Keane said
Mr Keane said any mention of club names are permissible in an editorial sense.
"For editorial use there is no issue, but again for anything attached to commercial relationship, no," Mr Keane said.
"It's exactly the same as any organisation would do to protect its commercial right."
Up to 36 submissions have been made to a Senate Committee about the restricted use of reporting of sporting news, after concerns Australians were being denied coverage of sporting events.
The Senate committee will report their findings to the Senate on May 14.
http://www.contestedfooty.com/