New FA mascots taking the pitch
from Fantasy Ethos:
With huge fantasy ramification overseas and potentially even in the United States, Britain's High Court ruled that the schedules of the English Premier League are copyrighted materials and should be protected as such. The court ruled that since making the schedules was a very complicated activity that schedule makers should have the results of their laboring protected under British copyright law. The lawsuit was brought by the EPL against a subsidiary of Yahoo!, which printed the schedules without licensing the information from the EPL.Further:
Fantasy English Premier League is one of the largest fantasy markets outside of the United States and is the most popular in a number of countries, including the United Kingdom. While it remains to be seen how this will be enforced in Britain, and if possible, in the United States, this should definitely be something of which anyone operating or playing in an EPL game should take note.
The judge said the work in compiling the fixture lists in England and Scotland involved "very significant labour and skill".
After trawling through national and European law, he concluded that the lists were the subject of database copyright.
Our friends at Y!UK were party to this suit. Hopefully our fantasy game won't be impacted by this ruling.
It's hard to see how this decision holds up. If the difficulty in producing the schedule was the determining factor, how to you set a threshold? What is the amount of work - 1 hour, 3 days, 6 months - that triggers copyright protection? Is the FA willing to forgo the huge amount of interest, publicity and good-will that coverage of their league - not to mention fantasy premier league games - generates in return for a few quid in licensing fees? It hardly seems likely.
This is such moneygrubbing bullshit.
ReplyDeleteYahoo will have no problem forking over the license fee. It sucks for websites run by fans and hobbyists!
We should do what ppl did for Winning 11, i.e. change the names of teams. Imagine Mersey Reds vs Mersey Blues.
-HC
It's a shame that the EPL doesn't have any other way to make money from producing that schedule, like actually holding competitions between the teams on those dates, letting them sell tickets, and taking a cut of the revenues. Then they could pay the schedule makers for their labor. Or labour.
ReplyDeleteDamn, this news dampens the great news I heard earlier in that Rossi didn't make the Italy WC squad! But, I just don't see the US Supreme court giving a same ruling...So hopefully we'll be ok here.
ReplyDeleteSteve
Absolute mind-boggling.
ReplyDeleteHow can it even GET to this point. Over the schedule?! Unreal...
This is bordering on rediculous, oh wait never mind, border crossed.
ReplyDeleteCome on!?!?
ReplyDeleteWhat next? Match results and reports?
I can understand protecting their methods, but once a schedule is released.....is it not public knowledge? Besides, would the EPL not want MORE people to know about, plan for, and watch the matches? Other outlets providing info on the EPL gives the EPL even more exposure = basically free advertising.
Pure greed and arrogance.