DMCA & Copyright Policy

Where we stand on copyright

FOOTBALL INSTANT sits on both sides of copyright at once. What we write is how the publication survives, so we defend it. What photographers, clubs, competitions and broadcasters make is how they survive, so we respect it. This page describes how we use work that is not ours, how to notify us if you believe something here infringes a right you hold, what follows a notification, and how to respond if material you supplied has been removed. The procedure follows the notice and takedown model of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and we run the same procedure for valid notices under the equivalent laws of other countries, because the people whose work we quote and the readers we serve are spread across all of them. Questions go to support@futbolalinstante.com with COPYRIGHT in the subject line.

Work that is not ours, and how we use it

You cannot report on football without quoting the game’s institutions and showing its images. Our rules are these.

Club and league statements, federation and confederation communications, competition regulations, disciplinary decisions and filed accounts are quoted only as far as reporting and criticism require, with the source named and, wherever one exists, a link to the original document.
Crests, badges, competition marks and kit designs are the trademarks and works of their owners. They appear only to identify the club or competition a story is about, never as decoration and never in a way that suggests the club or competition produced or approved our article.
Match photography is our own, licensed, supplied to us for publication, in the public domain, or released under terms that permit our use. A photograph being visible on social media does not make it ours to take. Where a supporter’s photograph or video is itself the news, we ask permission, give credit and, where appropriate, pay.
Broadcast stills and clips are used only where the broadcast material is the subject of the story, such as a refereeing decision under review, and then only to the extent needed to show what is being discussed.
Squad lists, team sheets, official attendance figures, results and other factual match data are facts and are reported as facts, with the competition credited as the source. We do not copy another party’s compiled database or reproduce its tables wholesale.

We believe all of this falls within fair use and fair dealing. If you think your work has been treated otherwise, write to us before going anywhere else. Disagreements of this kind are usually settled in a single exchange of email.

Sending a takedown notice

If you believe that material on futbolalinstante.com infringes a copyright you own or are authorised to enforce, email support@futbolalinstante.com with a notice containing everything section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act requires:

the copyrighted work you say has been infringed, with a representative list where the notice covers several;
the material on this site you say infringes it, described precisely enough for us to find it, meaning the page address and the specific image, clip or passage;
how to reach you: name, postal address, telephone number and email address;
a statement of your good faith belief that the use is not authorised by the owner, the owner’s agent or the law;
a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the notice is accurate and that you are the owner or act with the owner’s authority;
your signature, physical or electronic.

A notice missing any of these cannot be acted on until we have written back and received the rest, so completeness is in your own interest. If the law you are proceeding under requires the registered details of a designated agent, ask and we will supply them in writing.

What happens once a notice arrives

Receipt is confirmed within two business days. The notice is then reviewed by an editor who had no part in publishing the material. Where the claim is clearly sound, the material is removed or replaced and you are told. Where we hold a licence, a press accreditation, an agency supply or a public domain basis for the material, we say so and show it. Where the use is fair, we explain why, leave the material in place, and you may take whatever further step the law allows. Where a reader or contributor supplied the material, it comes down promptly, the notice is passed to whoever supplied it and they are given the chance to answer. Removing material in response to a notice is the process the statute prescribes while the question is settled; it is not an admission that the material infringed.

Notices sent in bad faith

Copyright notices are sometimes aimed at reporting rather than at infringement. A club unhappy about a story on its accounts, an agency embarrassed by a briefing we described, or an organisation that would rather a disciplinary decision went unquoted cannot make any of it disappear with a form letter, and a screenshot of a published regulation does not infringe anything because quoting it is inconvenient. Knowingly misrepresenting that material infringes, or that it was removed in error, can make the sender liable for damages, costs and legal fees. Every notice is assessed with the difference between infringement and journalism firmly in mind, and where a notice is plainly an attempt to bury accurate reporting, we reserve the right to say so publicly.

Counter-notices

If something you supplied was taken down after a notice and you believe the removal was mistaken or misidentified the material, a counter-notice may be sent to the same address. It must carry your signature, physical or electronic; identify what was removed and where it used to be; state, under penalty of perjury, your good faith belief that the removal was a mistake or a misidentification; give your name, address and telephone number; and confirm that you accept the jurisdiction of the competent court for the judicial district of your address, or, if that address lies outside the country whose law governs the notice, of any judicial district in which we may be found, and that you will accept service of process from whoever sent the original notice. We pass the counter-notice to that person. Unless they tell us within ten business days that they have gone to court to restrain the alleged infringement, the material may be restored, normally ten to fourteen business days after the counter-notice reached us.

Repeat infringers, and complaints that are not about copyright

A contributor or supplier who infringes repeatedly stops being one. A copyright notice is also the wrong instrument for a complaint about accuracy, fairness, privacy or the existence of a story. Those belong under CORRECTION or GENERAL and are handled under our corrections policy. Using a copyright notice to remove a story will fail, and it may bring the liability described above.

Using our work

Linking to any story and quoting a short passage with attribution and a link is always welcome, as our terms of service confirm. Republishing whole articles, scraping the site, lifting our match reports or data tables, reusing our work without credit and feeding our articles into products, models or datasets are infringements, and we act on them. To republish a piece, reuse a graphic or reproduce anything longer than a short excerpt, email support@futbolalinstante.com with COPYRIGHT in the subject line, describing what you want and how it will be used. Educational and non-commercial requests usually get a quick yes; commercial republication is licensed on written terms.