There are some funny things happening in football's little corner of cyberspace. Unofficial Arsenal website Up The Arse! has challenged the FA Premier League over the controversial issue of fixture lists and copyright law.
The Premier League wrote last month to a number of unofficial sites that include fixtures for their respective clubs. They regard the list of matches as their intellectual property, and charge for their reproduction online or offline. Soccernet has seen a copy of one letter that was allegedly from the Premier League. It states:
'Please note that we own the copyright and all other rights in the fixture list and/or any substantial part of it.
'We have not consented to your use of the fixture list. By reproducing the fixture list, you are infringing our copyright.'
The letter instructs the website either to remove the fixtures or to pay for 'a suitable licence', alleged to be £300 per site.
I understand that a number of sites have removed the fixtures, but Up The Arse! has taken the fight back to the Premier League.
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The people they are actually threatening are people sitting at home, with no money, who are doing it for the love of the game
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Editor, Up The Arse!
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The fanzine website published every conceivable combination of fixtures for the Gunners for next season - at home and away to every other club on every day of the season - and wrote to the Premier League to claim copyright of those fixtures: 'We are providing you with advanced notice that we are asserting our right to be known as the authors of this diary.
'If you insist on producing a "2001/2002" fixture list for the Premier League, you will be infringing our copyright'.
(Soccernet, in line with most commercial football sites, pays a licence fee to reproduce the fixtures for the FA Premier League, the Nationwide Football League and the Scottish Football League. Such fees are not demanded by Leagues in other countries.)
The dispute is currently ongoing. As a legal argument, it may not have legs.
The League is responsible for the games, and the actual fixtures will originate with them in due course. Nevertheless, the Up The Arse! Editor insists it is a worthwhile fight.
'It's disgusting the way the League are behaving', he told Soccernet. 'It's clear that commercial operations have something to gain from this, and they should pay the licence fee.
'But the people they are actually threatening are people sitting at home, with no money, who are doing it [their unofficial website] for the love of the game.'
'They're not going to make any money out of it. All that will happen is that people pull the fixtures from their sites - and then who benefits from that?'
What happens next? We were unable to get a response from the FA Premier League or from the Football League.
But the Editor of the unofficial Gunners website was being fatalistic. 'I will continue for as long as I can.... What worries me is that they've got some high-paid lawyers.'
Happy Christmas.
External link: Up The Arse!
Soccernet passes no judgement on the actions of Up The Arse! in this matter. We do not condone any illegal activity or breach of copyright
