In short, a recent correspondence from the AFL (page 1 / page 2) will cause this site to remove fixtures and hence tipping this year. Log in to have your say (read only).
Back in mid 1995 before the AFL even had a web site they instructed their lawyers to seek and destroy any web site containing Intellectual Property belonging to the AFL. While this (perhaps correctly) aimed to remove illegal use of images and logos they also deliberately targeted sites containing fixtures. Yes, the fixtures are copyright, belong to the AFL, are subject to change without notice and cannot be published without a specific license.
So, despite an uproar all sites accepted this and most closed down. This left people overseas (including Aussies on holidays or working abroard) without access to much information. In fact back then many people relied on hobby sites for scores and general updates, particularly during and prior to 1995. The situation was summed up well at the time by Darryl Harvey's missing web page and triggered both radio news and newspaper articles.
Based on various suggestions I continued to run my footy site (you can hardly shut down a service, such as a tipping competition, half way through the season) but removed all intellectual property, namely the fixtures. These were replaced with other information such as this (unformatted for no particular reason) ...
Round 1 Bear Bins v Dial A Stink Rub The Lone Norm v Clan Rot Rumble One v Dense Son Metal Fern v Fry It Oz Too Many Y's v What Horn Cord Nimh v Lone Egg A Dead Lie v Sweat Cost Go Wild Colon v Acts Of Roy
Of course Port Adelaide did not exist and West Coast were spared the nickname Ass Cot Wet.
Over time the team names for the games were brought back to avoid people (particularly new tipsters) from becoming very confused. And so the site lived on slowly declining in popularity as I found very little time to maintain it and add new features. Furthermore the AFL started its own site (very clunky and slow in the first few years) and other tipping sites popped up with prizes and the likes. Hey, how can someone easily an non commercially compete with big business? Alas, if I'd had more time. Of course being a supporter of the only team yet to have won a flag and a team that's only finished in the top half once in its ten year history often influenced motivation!
Well, its based on the recent correspondence (sorry for the current poor scan - I may fix later but wanted to get something out so used the fax scanner in default mode):
Frankly I still don't believe they have the cheek to say you cannot run a footy tipping competition either on the web or by writing your own software, but there you go. I don't intent to fight them. The AFL have proved over the years to be very ruthless and pretty quick to impose their power. I won't go on, but rather leave it to the forums for discussion (please log in to this site, or use read only mode).
The solution? I guess I could just list the 16 teams and let people tip the eight that are going to win (in other words let people use their own fixtures). Of course the site could hint that the eight selected teams were very very unlikely to win if a potentially troublesome combination was chosen. This is obviously quite legal, but again complicated and would require I change the server code .. time I simply don't have (as illustrated by how long it took me to get a simple web page up here). Also, like the acronyms its incredibly awkward and would lose even more popularity.
Without a better suggestion, and fast, it looks like that's it for the tipping. I will still endeavor to update scores that have happened (public domain) so people can view histories, ladders, etc. If anyone knows other services doing this well tell me and I'll stop and leave it to someone else.
So, that's basically it. Time for the site to roll over and die.... The AFL has taken me on and won. I wonder if they own the IP on this image?
