At last, a human rights cause to draw even the most rugby-obsessed Afrikaner into the World Cup: some Dutch-effect women have been detained for wearing orange dresses at Soccer City. Details of this rapidly developing international incident remain contested, with the oppressors (the young ladies) telling a slightly different tale to that being spun by the victim (Fifa). The fallout has seen ITV pundit Robbie Earle fired, and at this rate Prince Harry may well be implicated by dawn … but here are the facts, such as they can be established.

On Monday a group of 36 women attended the game between Holland and Denmark wearing orange dresses available from the leading Dutch beer brand Bavaria, although they bear no logo. As one of the Holland fans tells The Star newspaper in Johannesburg: "We were sitting near the front, making a lot of noise, and the cameras kept focusing on us."

At this point, accounts diverge. According to the women, they were surrounded by stewards, who took them to be questioned by Fifa and the police. The officers warned their mini-dressed suspects that they could be arrested for ambush marketing and spend six months in jail. Then they drove them home after making copies of their passports and vowing to investigate further.

A Fifa spokesman, meanwhile, swears blind that the miscreants were allowed to stay in their seats until the end of the game, and that they were "young South African women being used by a large Dutch brewery". Think of them as advertising mules.

Fifa does concede that the 36 marketing insurgents were taken to what is described as a "facility", where they were questioned by the authorities. Meanwhile, it turns out that the entire block of tickets used by the ladies was allocated to our own Robbie Earle, who passed on his 50 – that's right, 50! – free tickets to Bavaria beer. He has now been fired by ITV.

Naturally, Bavaria beer is far from heartbroken at this high-profile outcome, with a spokesman observing of the logo-less dresses: "Fifa doesn't have a monopoly on the colour orange."

Or do they? Are there any other colours to which Fifa owns exclusive rights? What sort of prison stretch is one looking at for taupe?

On these inquiries, alas, the organisation's official spokesman is unwilling to be drawn – although he is keen to praise Fifa operatives, who apparently seized some flags bearing a Ghanaian company's name at the Serbia v Ghana game on Sunday.

On the one hand, then, it is yet another triumph for Fifa's chillingly efficient rights protection team. But on the other, the whole episode affords another glimpse of the World Cup's funny old moral universe. Clearly you can't do what Robbie Earle did and keep your job (unless you're Fifa vice-president Jack Warner, who made an estimated $1m flogging his 2006 World Cup tickets). But we can all probably do without Fifa's "fair play in marketing" lectures, which clothe commercial ruthlessness in the language of sporting decency, apparently oblivious to the impression given by wallpapering every stadium with signs that push BP or declare "We proudly accept only Visa".

"The beautiful game," Fifa reiterated yesterday, faces a deadly threat: "ambush marketing activities" by firms who wish "to secure themselves a slice of the [World Cup] rewards illicitly without offering any financial support in return".

This sort of rabid protectionism might feel depressingly inevitable in the gleaming, super-efficient first world of tournaments such as Germany 2006. It is considerably more jarring in a country where the vast majority of people could never dream of affording the cheapest match ticket, and where unofficial local World Cup merchandise really doesn't feel worth coming down upon like a ton of bricks.

Then again, Sepp Blatter & Co's priorities have always tended toward the skewed. When racist chanting rained down on England players during a 2004 friendly against Spain in Madrid, Fifa imposed a risible £44,750 fine on the Spanish FA. In that same year, Cameroon wore an unauthorised kit at the African Cup of Nations – an offence for which Fifa saw fit to fine the Cameroonian FA £86,000.

So with Fifa's charmless world view, there is every chance wearing a knock-off Bafana Bafana shirt counts as receiving stolen goods, and the Dutch ladies are advised to engage a top-flight lawyer as a matter of urgency.