Legal threat shuts down Footy Tweets site

FA doesn't want you twittering matchside

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13 April 2009 9:00 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Twittering about the football scores when you attend a football game could land you in trouble following the news that one football mad twitter fan has been hauled over the coals by the English Premier League and Football League for infringing copyright.

According to PaidContent.co.uk Ollie Parsley‘s Footy Tweets site and Twitter feed had been providing live score updates for English Premier League and Football League games, seemingly repurposed from the BBC’s Press Association (PA) feed.

However last week, the website reports, he "was served with a cease and desist order from Football Data Co (FDC), the fixtures company co-owned by the leagues and which licenses PA as its official live data provider".

"The email I first received said FootyTweets was 'using the UK Club Crests and League logos without permission from the Clubs or the UK Leagues'. The e-mails that then went back and forth went on to add the fact that I need a licence to display fixtures (I looked on their site and it would be £52,000!). Further to this I was told I need another licence to display match updates. I currently get this from an outside source and then send them to Twitter", Parsley says on his blog.

While Parsley says that he wasn't making any money from the venture, it's clear that it is a grey area with more micro blogging services like Twitter making it easy to post scores and commentary for all to see live from the game.