Tag Archives: The Scottish Premier League

@FootyTweets saga: The ‘cease and desist’ emails in full

For a full explanation of the following emails, see ‘FootyTweets’ use of fixtures info breached copyright, says firm representing UK professional football leagues,’ on the Journalism.co.uk main site, which reports how the sport fansite FootyTweets and its Twitter feed will no longer use club logos or include live match updates, after receiving a cease and desist letter on behalf of the company which handles match report licences for the four professional UK football leagues.

Here are the emails from NetResult, on behalf of Football DataCo, sent to FootyTweets’ Ollie Parsley, asking him to change the way he used information and images for his site and Twitter feed:

Dear Sirs,

DataCo_NBCAD_25050

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 UK Club Crests, for use by third parties. We have noticed that your website http://footytweets.com/ is displaying UK Club Crests without permission.

We wish to make you aware that we have a good faith belief that your present use is an infringement of the Leagues’ legal rights and that all such unauthorised use must cease immediately. Please confirm by return your agreement to this and give your undertaking to cease all such infringements on any and all of your web sites. Pending your response the Leagues’ rights are fully reserved. We thank you for your cooperation.

Yours sincerely,
Philip Stubbs
NetResult A Division of Projector NetResult Ltd Broadway House,
2-6 Fulham Broadway,
London,
SW6 1AA

Another email:

Hi Ollie,

Thanks for your reply. You can find our website at the following address

http://www.nr-online.com/
http://www.nr-online.com/clients.php

and we are also mentioned on the football dataco website at the following addresses (Football dataco license live data, fixtures and work on behalf of the UK leagues to protect their rights, NetResult helps protect these rights)

What We Do


http://www.football-dataco.com/partners.htm

I did send formal cease and desist emails to the addresses supplied on your footytweet site and the address in your DNS lookup, i can reforward these on to you tomorrow if you wish.

The logo and league crest content covers all UK domestic leagues. In order to use these you will need to contact the League and each club in question and ask for their permission to use the logos. All content will need to be removed until permission is granted.

Your site was actually bought to our attention by several clubs who are not happy their rights are being used unorthorised and have asked us to contact you to get this content removed.

Also, if you had planned to update scores during matches or add fixtures to your tweets you will need to purchase a license from Football DataCo that allows you to use this content.

If you have any further questions please do ask.

Kind Regards

Philip Stubbs

Audioboo: Can it be used for news reporting? Some case studies

Yesterday Journalism.co.uk spoke with Audioboo founder Mark Rock about the potential for the iPhone audio app to be used for local news reporting:

“[E]veryone knows what’s happening to traditional media and local newspapers are dying by the moment. But is there a very simple and easy way [for others] to start collecting audio data and using it?”

As the tool is developed – both by Audioboo’s team and third-parties once the API is released – there’s even more scope for using geotagged audio news reports.

You can see the possibilities from how it’s already being used by some Audioboo-ers:

Pie & Bovril
The Scottish Premier League site ran a trial of the app last weekend. The aim? To get ‘sound byte updates’ from fans in and around stadia, the site’s David MacDonald told Journalism.co.uk.

“Although the big clubs are well catered for of an afternoon with live commentary we felt that the smaller clubs weren’t really in a position to service the information requirements of their fans who can’t make it along for whatever reason or those ex-pats who are keen to find out what’s happening from afar on a Saturday afternoon,” explains MacDonald.

“We pick up the information via feeds from Boo which automatically populate the appropriate section of our site.”

P&B has tried updating web pages using email to text gateways and experimented with SMS updates, but these were time consuming and failed to convey the mood of fans at the game, he adds.

“It’s early days but we feel this could be a really neat, low cost way, of getting information back from around the grounds to those unable to attend. We’ll continue to grow the trial and get a few users on it and see how it goes from there,” says MacDonald.

London SE1 Community Website
James Hatts, editor of community website London SE1, published by Banksidepress said the site is also experimenting with Audioboo and has uploaded newsworthy clips, such as updates on a local fire.

“I think AudioBoo has great potential for local reporting – it’s just so easy. No waiting to get back to the office, no transcribing endless recordings, no editing, no waiting for YouTube (for example) to process your video,” says Hatts.

According to Hatts, the ‘idiot-proof brilliance’ of the app is comparable to using a Flip camera and could make it an important part of a modern reporter’s kit.

However, using it in a way that makes economic sense is a key consideration for Bankside:

“It’s early days for Audioboo but at the moment there’s no way to drive traffic to our own site from a boo page, for instance,” explains Hatts.

“There are interesting future possibilities for using voice recognition software to display contextual adverts around the audio player (or even to insert relevant audio adverts).

“At the moment it’s great for novelty value and building an audience and building a brand, but even an operation like ours which is run on a shoestring needs to be able to derive some revenue from our content.”

Our Man Inside
Rock said Audioboo should be used to augment other reporting and that audio was an emotive medium – both ideas that seem to have been taken on board by ‘social media mongrel’ Christian Payne in his use of the app.

“[W]hile i experiment, I have fallen back in love with audio. It makes you think more about how you describe your surroundings. It makes me want my surroundings to explain themselves. Either by getting close to a person and their opinion or close to environmental sounds,” he writes in a blog post.

“Combined with a photo attached to act as a catalyst for the imagination, the listener is not being force fed the story. They have to take a moment to let their imagination get involved in the media.”