So, some of our more regular readers would have noticed that in the last couple of days ContestedFooty has reverted back to some of its more old school layouts. Many of you are probably wondering what happened to our awesome banner and the photos we would display at the top of articles. Let us explain.
At 11:43am on Wednesday April 29, 2009, ContestedFooty received an email from an AFL Legal representative saying that the AFL owns registered trademarks for the term “AFL” and all AFL club names, including nicknames. It then went on to say that it also owned the rights to intellectual property such as images from AFL matches and events, including any photo of a player in a team guernsey. The email continued to state that ContestedFooty was giving the impression that we were affiliated with the AFL, further stating this was incorrect. It was then demanded that ContestedFooty remove all content that qualifies under these conditions.
As such we at ContestedFooty decided it was prudent to remove all images containing players or logos related to the AFL or any AFL club. Unfortunately for us that included our brand spanking new banner. We also decided to remove the term AFL from headings, and tags wherever it was possible. We have added a paragraph to the start of our “About Us”, “Privacy” and “Terms and Conditions” pages clarifying that ContestedFooty is in no way, shape or form affiliated with the AFL.
The final demand according to the email was that we do not refer to AFL teams by their names and/or nicknames. If we were to do this we would be unable to continue running our website.
Explain to us how a website that is designed to talk about footy and issues around footy be able to share the writers thoughts on footy if it is not allowed to even mention the code being played or the teams that are playing? We understand the concerns the AFL has about the use of photos and logos but we believe they are being a tad heavy handed by saying we cannot even name the teams we support.
We at ContestedFooty are simply footy fanatics who wished to share ideas with fellow footy fanatics. We do not believe that we are doing anything to harm the AFL or its reputation. If anything we believe we are helping to promote the code that is trying so hard to spread its influence across Australia.
How can you support ContestedFooty
ContestedFooty would like to thank the Herald Sun newspaper for its continued support on this issue. The paper published an article in the Saturday edition supporting ContestedFooty’s position and for this we are very grateful.
UPDATE: We’d also like to thank The Age for its support via this article
UPDATE 2: The story was front page of The Age website
UPDATE 3: The Herald article can be found here
UPDATE 4: ABC (774) The World Today Story: Audio, Transcript
UPDATE 5: The Age / Real Footy have run an updated story and it is on the front page of The Age’s website.
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