Who Owns Baseball Statistics?

Class Act Dynamo writes "A sports fantasy league company has asked a federal court to decided whether baseball statistics belong in the public domain as history or are the property of major league baseball. Basically, they had been licensing the statistics for nine cents (US) per gross from the Major League Baseball Players Association. But MLB recently bought the rights to be the sole licensor and has refused to renew the license of the fantasy league company. From the article: 'Major League Baseball has claimed that intellectual property law makes it illegal for fantasy league operators to commercially exploit the identities and statistical profiles of big league players.' What does the Slashdot community think? Shoud Barry Bonds' record 73 single season homeruns be in the public domain, or should I worry about having to pay royalties for the first part of this compound sentence?"

Facts?

[EEBaum]

What, we can own facts now?

Somehow I'm not at all surprised.

Re:Facts?

[Feanturi]

Somehow I'm not at all surprised.

I happen to own your lack of surprise, it's all right here in this deed. You now owe me $5.00 for each occurrence that doesn't surprise you, or the viewing of anything in your surroundings that appears to be perfectly normal.

Re:Facts?

[jeeperscats]

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

Re:Facts?

[terrymr]

That would be silly.

Of course I could argue that a cop can't write me a speeding ticket because i own the copyright in how fast i was travelling.

Re:Facts?

[sinistre]

Better yet. Have him write the ticket and then collect royalities twice the amount. Actually make money speeding :)

Re:Facts?

[CastrTroy]

Maybe you could use some radar/laser interference device to try to encrypt you speed. When they find a way around your device, to actually figure out your speed, then they would be breaking the DMCA.

Ooooooh

[AoT]

I got dibs on planck's constant!

That's nothing!

[jd]

I bought Avagadro's Constant and the Hubble Constant off eBay, and I own stock in e, pi and the golden ratio.

Re:That's nothing!

[SamSim]

Unfortunately for you, the value of pi has decreased since you bought stock in it. Sucker!

Re:Ooooooh

[AuMatar]

Unfortunately, Microsoft has beaten you and patented 1 and 0. [theonion.com]

Re:Ooooooh

[dabigpaybackski]

I probably get Heisenburg's Uncertainly Principle!

Re:Facts?

[Anonymous Coward]

There have always been stupid people and there always will be. The question is who are the more stupid, those whos ideas are insanity manifest or we who allow such fools to be elevated to positions of power and authority? I will give you two quotes in the context of which my feelings will be self evident.

If I give you a pfennig, you will be one pfennig richer and I'll be one pfennig poorer. But if I give you an idea, you will have a new idea, but I shall still have it, too.

A Einstein

On two occasions I have been asked by members of Parliament, 'Pray, Mr.
Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers
come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of
ideas that could provoke such a question.

Charles Babbage

I myself cannot imagine the mental disorder neccesary to consider as information property or
the absence of realism which leads one to believe that it can be controlled. That we are even having this debate is quite surreal and fills me with optimism that by the logic of natural law our children will look back at the 'intellectual property' debacle at the start of the 21st century, and piss their pants laughing.

Re:Facts?

[radtea]

The current concept of "copyright" dates to the printing press.

But the idea that copyright is a property right and that copyright violation is theft is relatively recent.

Economists talk about the positive and negative externalities of economic behaviour. An "externality" is a consequence of an action that is not borne by the person taking the action. Positive externalities are good things that acrue to others through my actions that I do not get paid for. Negative externalities are bad things that happen to others because of my actions that they do not get compensated for.

Property rights are a human invention to minimize negative externalities. If I own property I can prevent others from using it to dump their waste, or from farming it and leaving me with the cost of maintaining it, etc. My property right protects my exclusive use of my property from the negative externalities that others may put upon it. At the same time, they prevent me from putting negative externalities on others.

Copyright is a human invention to protect positive externalities. As someone else has pointed out in a quote from Einstein, if I give you a new idea, you have the idea and I still have it. I have created a benefit for you without significant cost to myself. Copyright is a way of trying to protect in law the benefit I have given you, so that I may capture that positive externality in the form of some kind of payment.

Copyright and property rights are therefore different in kind. Copyright is licenseable (and sub-licensable if the license is written that way) but should not be salable as property. The GPL, for example, treats copyright this way.

Every absurd move in "intellectual property" law in the past couple of decades is fundamentally linked to the notion of ideas of any kind as "property". Once you have granted that notion, any number of insane things follow, including the notion that facts can be property.

The fundamental intellectual fight is to get rid of the idea of "intellectual property", and to explain when it comes up why it is an absurd idea with no historical basis, and an abuse of the term "property" as a false metaphor for what should be a licensing/sub-licensing relationship dealing with a temporary monopoly right that is artificially created to reward the creators of certain types of work to the general benefit of society.

Re:Facts?

[NoSuchGuy]

What, we can own facts now?

The earth is a flat disk!

For centuries it worked!

Ask your GrandGrandGrandGrandGrandGrandMa

Re:Facts?

[harmonica]

Ask your GrandGrandGrandGrandGrandGrandMa

Which one? I have 64 of those.

Compilations of facts

[tm2b]

I'm not sayin' it's right, but I suspect that they'll go after not the facts per se, but use a strategy that depends upon the compilation copyright on how those facts are delivered en masse.

An example: you can't copyright individual phone numbers, but the phone companies do own a compilation copyright on the collections of those phone numbers. Since MLB owns the broadcasts, and the derivitive works made from those broadcasts, I suspect that they'll say that the grouping of those statistics that is deliv

Re:Compilations of facts

[cameldrv]

Not since Feist v. Rural Telephone Service. Facts compiled without any creativity are not copyrightable. The case I mentioned above was specifically about copying phone books wholesale, and the Supreme Court ruled that the phone book could not be copyrighted.

Re:Compilations of facts

[archmedes5]

While the document does, in fact state that the facts themselves aren`t copywritable (Only their arrangement and selection), all data is derived from members of the MLB organization. Though this information was generated through observation of the players` physical exertion, one could possibly construe a baseball players` performance as an original expression of his physical acuity. It`s a show he puts on for the spectators, and information gathered from that performance could possibly be copywritable.

It`

Rights in databases, not in facts

[john-da-luthrun]

I'm not sure what the US position is, but in the European Union we have "database rights" that are rights in a database as a whole, rather than in the data held within that database. So in the case of baseball, there's nothing to stop you revealing that so-and-so scored 70 home runs in a season, but you might be prevented from systematically using the database in order to compile a searchable database of home runs per season across all players over the past 50 years.

That said, attempts by sporting bodies in Europe to enforce these rights have not met with success. For example, the British Horseracing Board tried to stop the bookmakers William Hill from using the BHB database of pending horse races for its website, and various football governing bodies tried to use database rights to force companies publishing TV listings (TV companies, newspapers etc.) to pay royalties for including details of football fixtures in their listings.

All these attempts failed when the European Court of Justice held that the sporting bodies had not invested sufficient resources in creating these fixtures databases. All the effort had actually gone into arranging and managing the fixtures in order to run the actual sport, and getting a database that could then be licensed to others was just a by-product of this main activity, rather than something needing sufficient effort in its own right to qualify for database rights.

Re:Facts?

[galgon]

This lawsuit is less about facts and more about players identities. A newspaper saying ballplayer X has a .241 batting average is legal because of freedom of the press and the fact that the newspaper is not using the identity of the player for commercial reasons. However, selling a product, such as baseball cards, with a picture and stats on the back is commercially using the players identity. This is a fine line I know.

The battle going on here is whether using the players names and stats in a fantasy game amounts to using it commercially or not. This article gives a really good summary:
http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/November-Decemb er-2005/argument_schwarz_novdec05.msp [legalaffairs.org]

Huh?

[msauve]

A newspaper saying ballplayer X has a .241 batting average is legal because of freedom of the press and the fact that the newspaper is not using the identity of the player for commercial reasons.

Where did you find a non-commercial newspaper? All of the major newspapers around here are for-profit, some owned by quite large corporations (i.e. Advance Publications [wikipedia.org]). Both the newspaper and the fantasy league are reporting sports statistics for profit making, entertainment purposes. There is no distinction base

Re:Facts?

[QuestorTapes]

A little additional clarification. The referenced article basically says that players own their names and likenesses, for marketing purposes. The baseball owners are trying to claim that the statistics are part of the "identity" of the player, which would allow them to prohibit commercial use under same trademark laws that prohibit using players pictures and names on products.

It's a sneaky proposition, and hopefully the judge will toss it out.

Re:Facts?

[dominator]

No, you can't copyright facts or even collections of facts. SCOTUS has decreed that Copyright doesn't attach to them in the 1991 landmark decision of Feist v. Rural [wikipedia.org].

The ruling has major implications for any project that serves as a collection of knowledge. Information (that is facts, discoveries, etc.), from any source, is fair game, but cannot contain any of the "expressive" content added by the source author.

Re:Facts vs. Database

[dominator]

Importantly, Feist v. Rural was a case about databases (phone books, specifically). Before Feist, courts used a "sweat of the brow" rule, which meant that anyone who invested significant effort into creating a work was entitled to copyright protection for that work. In their unanimous ruling, the Court reversed this precedent in Feist.

It is a long-standing principle of United States copyright law that "information" is not copyrightable, O'Connor notes, but "collections" of information can be. Rural claimed a collection copyright in its directory. The court clarified that the intent of copyright law was not, as claimed by Rural and some lower courts, to reward the efforts of persons collecting information, but rather "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" (U.S. Const. 1.8.8), that is, to encourage creative expression.

Since facts are purely copied from the world around us, O'Connor concludes, "the sine qua non of copyright is originality".

Congress is considering new legislation to "protect" databases, thus effectively nullifying the ruling in Feist.

Of course, the MLB does not *have* to sell this data to anyone if they don't want to, and they could stop licensees from redistributing the data under contract law. But they can't stop other people from collecting this data and selling it. Nor can they enforce their "no recounts or descriptions of this game is permitted without the express written consent of MLB and $TV_STATION" clause either. No one owns facts.

Re:Facts?

[tdemark]

<obHomer>
See that ship over there? They're re-broadcasting Major League Baseball with implied oral consent, not express written consent -- or so the legend goes.
</obHomer>

Re:Facts?

[Pofy]

>Bear in mind statistics are one of the most important components in
>baseball.

So? It is still just facts. Weather statistics, like the temperature and wether the sun is shining or not is one of the most important components for anyone in meteorology, still doesn't mean no one else can tell about the weather yesterday they read about or saw.

Re:Facts?

[CortoMaltese]

It is still just facts. Weather statistics, like the temperature and wether the sun is shining or not is one of the most important components for anyone in meteorology, still doesn't mean no one else can tell about the weather yesterday they read about or saw.

Yeah, but you didn't buy a ticket from the corporation organizing the wonder of weather to see it, did you? Be sure the check the EULA next time you go see a game of baseball! I'll bet it says "You are granted a non-exclusive license to enjoy the

Re:Facts?

[Pofy]

>Yeah, but you didn't buy a ticket from the corporation organizing the
>wonder of weather to see it, did you?

Again, so what? You don't have to see something to be able to tell about it. I can tell about a score in a game even if I did not see it just as I can tell the temperature in some city even if I was not there to see or experience it myself.

>Be sure the check the EULA next time you go see a game of baseball! I'll
>bet it says "You are granted a non-exclusive license to enjoy the game
>yadda yadda but the ownership and rights to the results remain the sole
>property of blah blah blaa." ;-)

If we disregard that I don't go and see baseball since baseball is basically not played in my country, the point is that there is no such thing as "right to results". It is just plain facts and can't be owned of have any rights any more than you can own the right to the temperature of some place. There is no such "rights". Doesn't matter iof someone claims it. You can claim the right to the temperature in your garden all you want, that doesn't mean no one else can tell about it.

Re:Facts?

[Dashing Leech]

there is no such thing as "right to results"

There might be one caveat to that. First, though, I'd add that it's not clear which IP law they're referring to. You can't patent it, neither the calculations which are standard mathematical formula nor the numbers that result from calculation. It can't be copyright. That's for a specific expression. For example, you can repeat the exact same information someone has written about and just use your own words. So as long as they don't copy, say, sports articles that quote statistics but just use the statistics, they should be fine.

That being said, I seem to recall a case a few years ago about compiled lists and copyright. Something like a company that wanted the copyright on their customer list because someone else was using it. Does anybody else remember something like that? I don't remember the outcome.

If something like compiled lists are copyrightable, it seems to me that it can't be held up if someone compiles their own list, i.e., does the statistical calculations themselves. The question then becomes where they get the raw data if MLB doesn't release it. Curious. This does seem dumb though.

Re:Facts?

[CastrTroy]

If you wanted to keep you customer list from other companies, you'd have to use the trade secret laws. That is, don't publish your customers, for others to see. The phone book has no copyright, and is just a compiled list. Companies copy it all the time, sometimes resulting in multiple phone books for the same town. A big waste of money.

Re:Facts?

[chuckT]

IANAL, but there is nothing (unless you agreed to some sort of implied contract when you bought the ticket, but that's another issue...) to stop you going to the game, and keeping track of the statistics. In that sense, surely the information itself is public domain. The compiled information provided by anyone who has actually done that is a different matter, however.

If I make maps, (for example), I don't claim copyright to the landscape, but I do require payment (and can claim copyright) for the time and effort I put into measuring it and making up the maps. By the same argument, anyone who actually compiles and publishes statistics should have ownership of the data it has taken them time and effort to gather, and should be able to charge for them. If you don't like it, then there is nothing to stop you compiling the data yourself from an original source.

On a related note, I understand that companies that do this kind of thing often incorporate minor, deliberate errors into the data so that they can identify copying. This could be a dummy entry on each page of the 'phone book, or a slight kink in a minor road on a map, that does not affect the usefulness of the data, but clearly identifies the origin. It can't be easily identified by an outside party either.

Chuck

Football Facts?

[rishistar]

In the UK the dates for the Football matches around the country are considered copyright - the fixture list on the main website is accompanied by:

"Copyright © and Database Right 2005 The FA Premier League Ltd / The Football League Ltd / The Scottish Premier League Ltd / The Scottish Football League. All rights reserved. Fixtures are subject to change. See Terms & Conditions."

IIRC they successfully sued someone who was using the dates without permission.

Re:Football Facts?

[rishistar]

Oh yeah, sorry should point out that the above is for the kind of football where the ball spends most of its time being kicked around by someones foot rather than being thrown around and caught in someones hands.

Re:Football Facts?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't pick the ball up?
Sheesh, you silly Europeans! That sport will *never* catch on.

Re:Football Facts?

[gormanly]

It's more like sending C&D notices to force small fry to cough up the cash.

Linky [guardian.co.uk]

Re:Football Facts?

[Builder]

In the UK we have an odd law around databases. In the US, traditionally data could not be copyrighted. In the UK, the first person to compile a specific database (think yellow pages) gets a monopoly on that kind of database for a number of years. It's a bit odd really...

Re:Football Facts?

[gnasher719]

'' SImilary a phone list book typically is protected under copyright law and you can't just copy it, however, the individual phone numbers are not protected. ''

In Germany, there has been a judgement that it is illegal to make copies of German Telecom's CD containing the complete phone directory, and it is illegal to buy a complete collection of phone books and scan them, but it _is_ legal to buy a complete collection of phone books (weighs about two tons), hire a few dozen people to type everything into a computer, and use that to create, then duplicate and sell your own phone directory CD.

Re:Football Facts?

[Stone Pony]

No, actually he's right, at least inasmuch as that the football authorities claim that the fixtures are copyright. The Guardian link [guardian.co.uk] (provided earlier by another poster) is quite informative on the background, which goes back to 1959.

The claim is presumably based on the principle that the fixtures are "created" and therefore subject to copyright. If you accept that, then why should other companies be able to profit from that act of creation without recognising the rights of the creators? I imagine that this would be particularly persuasive in the case of a pools company like Littlewoods, whose entire business model was based on the football fixtures list, yet didn't really put anything back into the game at all (at least not on a corporate level: in fact, members of the Moores family, who own Littlewoods, have been involved in the ownership of both Liverpool and Everton football clubs - Everton are the other big football club in Liverpool, for the benefit of non-UK readers - at various times).

Of course, the contrary point of view would be that compiling a fixture list is simply a cost of doing business for the football industry at large, and that any publication of fixture dates is a form of publicity for which the game should be grateful. This, however, would be inconsistent with the prevailing attitude in football, which is wring every last penny out of anyone they can by whatever means are available.

It may be that the status quo only holds up because no-one has challenged the 1959 case. After all, the sort of media outlet which publishes the entire fixture list for every club (i.e. national newspapers, football magazines and websites etc.) probably regards £6000 (the figure mentioned in the Guardian) as small potatoes compared to the aggravation of going to court. Legal action only ever seems to be threatened against these one-man-and-a-dog sort of operations.

The key difference between the situation here and what MLB is trying to do, though, is that baseball stats are matters of historical fact. Barry Bonds either did or did not hit 73 homers. Kerry Wood did or did not fan 20 Astros in a game. I don't see how that can be "owned".

Re:Football Facts? Slightly OT

[Red Flayer]

"Barry Bonds either did or did not hit 73 homers. Kerry Wood did or did not fan 20 Astros in a game. I don't see how that can be "owned"."

If I recall, recent investigations into steroid use in MLB may result Barry Bonds' record being 'owned.' Ditto with investigations into surgical enhancements of pitching arms resulting in Kerry Wood's historical performance being 'owned.' Or maybe I should say 'pwned,' seeing as I, and many others, will forever consider any records set in the recent era to have an ast

what an exciting game! (yawn....)

[fantomas]

"Statistics are one of the most important components in baseball"

Remind me to never bother using up any of my life finding out about this game... sounds really exciting ;-)

Re:Facts?

[Shano]

I always thought cricket was a way to work up a thirst before going to the pub, and the statistics were so the maths geeks (who can't bat to save themselves, let alone field) have something to do. A very democratic sport in that respect.

Radio cricket is an excuse for the commentators to discuss random bollocks (um, not literally) between balls, and televised cricket is pointless because they take it too seriously.

Given that the sort of statistics we're talking about here are closer to what statisticians would normally call data (X scored Y runs in game Z), it would seem obvious to me that it's historical fact, and not copyrightable. But then, I'm not American and don't give a toss about baseball.

Re:Facts?

[magores]

FYI.... '±' is the chinese character for "scholar".

-Lets consider that there are 1.3 billion Chinese.
-Let's assume that .3 billion of them are literate enough to recognize the character. (Might be lower, probably higher.)

So...
-Take .3 billion Chinese using the '±' character an average of once a year.
-Add the 4 Americans using the '±' character when they discuss baseball
-Multiply by your $50 USD per use

= You are a friggin kuai-ionnaire!!!!

Good luck collecting in China though. (The odds say, .... Odds are...., Statistically speaking... Your still poor.)

Re:Facts?

[Kadin2048]

Actually, this might not be a bad idea.

Although I'm not sure where the statistics in question are actually coming from, let's assume that they're from MLB analysts.

If they want to copyright their statistics, fine; I don't think they could stop me from going to a game, taking notes on how many pitches/balls/strikes/etc. there were, and then posting that information on a web site. Suppose a whole lot of people did that, and you would have a separate, uncopyrighted repository of statistics, independent of the

Stupid.

[NilObject]

I have recently acquired the rights to myself as a statistic. You may license me as a single number in your statistics if you pay an appropriate licensing fee.

Otherwise, you must cease including me in your statistics, like so:

MLB Fans: 27 - 1

Re:Stupid.

[packeteer]

You are 180 degrees wrong with the direction a law liek this would go.

You already CAN patent yourself. You can patent you own genes. The problem is yours have already been patended but that doesn't mean you didn't have the CHANCE to patent yourself, but you were just a little too late.

If you dont believe me read this [nationalgeographic.com].

So yes you can patent yourself but this does not give you power over government/corporate interests. It gives them power over you.

Crazy me

[AoT]

I thought this whole IP thing coult not get any wierder.

Next the government will start copyrighting statistics they do not want to get out.

Shit, I shouldn't have said that, just gives people ideas.

Not the weirdest

[www.sorehands.com]

There was a case in Texas, where building codes were copyrighted. In Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress Int'l Inc., No. 99-40632 (5th Cir. 2002) [perkinscoie.com] the 5th circuit found that once the law was enacted, that the law once enacted became public domain.

Or it took an appeals court to rule that a cow is not a motor vehicle [ernietheattorney.net].

Re:Not the weirdest

[freedom_india]

...there is no indication in the record that this particular cow had wheels. Therefore, it was not a motor vehicle and thus was not a "land motor vehicle" as defined in the policy.

WoW ! So other cows "may" have wheels?

This is deeep man !

Re:Crazy me

[drawfour]

Luckily, the US goverment cannot copyright anything. [copyright.com]

What the Slashdot community thinks

[dorkygeek]

What does the Slashdot community think? Shoud Barry Bonds' record 73 single season homeruns be in the public domain, or should I worry about having to pay royalties for the first part of this compound sentence?

The Slashdot community thinks: stop ending every story with those stupid questions.

Re:What the Slashdot community thinks

[NitsujTPU]

No, he's serious.

He wants a bunch of people with no expertise in the area that he's asking about to tell him what to think.

That's why they have "Ask Slashdot," which is where he should have put that.

Poll

[britneys 9th husband]

According to the poll in the article, only 3% of the people responding agree with MLB. Given the recent declining popularity of baseball as it tries to compete with video games, hockey, extreme sports, arena football, DVDs, and internet poker, maybe they should take into consideration the opinion of their fans on issues like this.

Re:Poll

[Associate]

How about their specific non-fans, or anti-fans. I for one hate baseball. If this whole who-ownes-the-stats thing brings it down, I'm all for it.

That's stupid

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Statistics aren't owned, they just *are*. I mean, any idiot can work out the stats by looking at who won what match, which is public knowledge.

Since the match results are public knowledge and the mathematical methods to work out the stats are both public knowledge and trivial, the result is public knowledge and can't be owned. Gee, Only In America©...

Re:That's stupid

[d474]

That should read: "Ameri©a"

Re:That's stupid

[chicagotypewriter]

Baseball statistics are easily downloadable in a database format with one line for every player season in MLB history. That is an amzing treasure trove of information, even for casual fans. Highly recommended.

the lahman database [baseball1.com] is probably what you speak of. thats actually how i learned python: wrote a little app to search for a person, a range of a certain stat, players by college they attended, etc.

Re:That's stupid

[zotz]

From the page you linked to:

"Limited Use License

This database is copyright 1996-2006 by Sean Lahman. A license is granted for individual use for research purposes only. It may not be re-distributed without permission. Any commercial use, or other dissemination of the database in part or in whole is prohibited. Use of this database constitutes acceptance of these terms."

Is he gonna sue MLB? For violating his claimed copyrights?

all the best,

drew

Re:Not so off-the-wall

[GMontag451]

You could argue that the match outcome is as protected by copyright as the set and costume designs, theme tune and so forth.

You could argue that, but you'd be wrong. The outcome is not protected by copyright anymore than the basic plot outline of a novel is protected by copyright. Its perfectly legal to tell someone that The Lord of the Rings is about a fight between good and evil, and that good wins in the end. Oh, and there's wizards. Facts about a copyrighted work are not part of the copyrighted work itself, even if the author/artist/etc. created those facts.

Gross Nine Cents Per?

[EEBaum]

The article says NINE PERCENT OF GROSS (9%), while the blurb says NINE CENTS PER GROSS ($0.000625 each). Big difference there, unless the blurb got that figure from somewhere not in the article.

That's just not cricket

[Aussie]

Sorry.

That's ridiculous!

[AxemRed]

With reasoning like that, I could go to the bar and drink 20 beers and then charge my friends royalties when they tell each other about it.

Seriously, though, do I even need to explain why this is ridiculous? How can publicly broadcasted factual information be property?

Re:That's ridiculous!

[Sancho]

From TFA:
Major League Baseball has claimed that intellectual property law makes it illegal for fantasy league operators to "commercially exploit the identities and statistical profiles" of big league players.

The more important issue is "identities." If they win this suit, tabloids, "entertainment" magazines about celebrities, news sites which talk about celebrities, etc. will all disappear or have to pay royalties for use of the identity of the celebrity. So personally, I'm hoping MLB wins this one, just so I don't have to read about Paris Hilton every other day.

What about their criminal records?

[wirefarm]

Do they compile statistics for "best hitter convicted of a DUI"?

What about "Drug of choice for a Hall of Famer?"

Maybe the most interesting ones would be "Most hits and runs by a player convicted of hit-and-run..."

This stuff makes me despise sports even more than I do now.

On the Subject of Baseball

[queenb**ch]

This will probably offend all the MLB fans out there, but I really just don't care. These guys are already over paid. Attendance is down because the ticket prices and concession prices, which the teams get a cut of, are already far too high. I don't know about where you live, but it's $5 for a dixie cup full of beer here on top of a $45 ticket. That's a bit too steep. Add in a couple of kids, some hotdogs and some cokes, and you can easily spend $300 for crappy seats at the Baseball game. Now they want to try to wring more money out of the fantasy baseball leageues? These guys are going to corporate themselves to death. The new national sport will be soccer soon until the soccer players become overpaid, whiny, wimps too.

2 cents,

Queen B

Re:On the Subject of Baseball

[civilizedINTENSITY]

But this isn't about baseball, this is about precedent. I really don't care about baseball, either, but I do care about what this means.

Re:On the Subject of Baseball

[Al Dimond]

Well one might say there are multiple kind of precedent. There is precedent in the legal sense where our courts must decide whether these statistics can be owned, and there is also what one might call "historical precedent". Businesses will constantly try to bend the law in their favor, even if historically rulings have gone the other way. Big and powerful businesses have a pretty good chance of doing it, even. But if there's a historical precedent that back in the days of nought-six the MLB got too greedy and fans lost their connection and walked away... well businesses know there's no judge to whom they can argue to try to get that overturned. They'll be careful to not repeat those mistakes because their money depends on it.

(I guess it must be pretty hard to be greedy enough to be subject to the second kind of precedent, 'eh? We can see that in almost every industry. I guess that's why we need the lawmakers and courts to step in sometimes. I agree with you that this is one of those times.)

Re:On the Subject of Baseball

[NitsujTPU]

There's the flip side.

If they keep doing this, one of two things will happen.

1) Everything that you experience for your entire life will be monitored, controlled by, and owned by a corporate entity. They'll make sure that you're not exposed to ideas like "freedom of thought." You won't care, because you won't know that there is an alternative.
2) Sometime before that happens, people will understand what's happening, and how to stop it. When MLB goes belly up (because nobody wanted to go anymore anyway), they'll oust their congresspeople from office (who, by then, will be subsidizing baseball). They'll start voting correctly, and thinking correctly. We won't need a bloody revolution, we'll just have people who don't let these things happen.

Re:On the Subject of Baseball

[beders]

The new national sport will be soccer soon until the soccer players become overpaid, whiny, wimps too.

Welcome to England

Re:On the Subject of Baseball

[Shimbo]

It's even worse in England. Here the League claim copyright on fixture lists: put your club's future games on a fan site and expect your ISP to receive a takedown notice.

Phonebook?

[omega_cubed]

They've gotta be kidding!

Aren't there precedents with phonebooks and such that while a particular presentation of facts can be copyrighted, the facts themselves cannot? If that is the case, what is the MLB's lawyer thinking when he advised the go-ahead on the exclusive license and refusal to let fantasy league operators use the stats at a price? Or are they using an alternative definition of "Intellectual Property" that I am not aware of?

Are they seriously trying to argue that records that a player set, as well as numbers calculated from the tabulated performance of an athelete are not facts? I seriously fail to see why MLB thinks that it has any ground here. Though, to be fair, TFA didn't give much insight to the MLB's argument since

Jim Gallagher, a spokesman for Major League Baseball Advanced Media, baseball's Internet arm, declined comment on the lawsuit...

Re:Phonebook?

[xoboots]

Are they seriously trying to argue that records that a player set, as well as numbers calculated from the tabulated performance of an athelete are not facts?

Perhaps they are admitting that the games are fiction -- so therefore fixed.

Oh, this is a FANTASTIC idea!

[One Blue Ninja]

This *is* Americorp, so of course this idea makes sense. You want people to have access to historical facts, for - FREE?? You communist bastard, somebody should lock you up for even SPEAKING such unpatriotic, un-Americorp propaganda!

In a related soon-to-be story, the Government, Inc. has now refused to licence statistical information on the number of U.S. casualties in Iraq, so anyone who reports this as anything other than "zero" will be arrested and detained, indefinately, with no access to a lawyer or due process - after all, you're obviously a terrorist sympathizer to commit such an act.

Similarly, all information on indigenous peoples in North America prior to the pilgrims is also unlicensed, so the people formerly known as "Native Americans" will no longer be entitled to run casinos or given any "special considerations".

It's about the identities of the players

[BadAnalogyGuy]

The issue is not whether Player X had 37 RBIs and 22 HRs last season. It's whether a business can be based off the names and identities of the players. I couldn't go around selling pictures of your mother without an agreement from her, she could sue me. This is why photographers have release forms for models (not that your mom is a model or anything).

Re:It's about the identities of the players

[J0nne]

by BadAnalogyGuy (945258)

Did you pick your nick yourself, or is that what people call you? Because it's spot-on ;-).

Re:It's about the identities of the players

[1u3hr]

The Freedom of the Press doesn't extend to gambling sites, or to video games, or to my selling pictures of your mother. Look at it another way. If you wanted to publish a book with images of Mickey Mouse without permission from Disney,

Bad analogy. Mickey is trademarked all over, not just copyright, precluding most commercial uses of the image. Mickey Mouse is a work of art, not factual. Butif you were writing a critique or review of Mr Mouse's films, you could include a number of stills as fair comment on

Re:It's about the identities of the players

[Jamesday]

It's already been established that a collectors' guide can contain images and titles of every image in a set of copyrighted works. Specifically, Beanie Babies in the case Ty, Inc., vs. Publications International, Ltd. [ivanhoffman.com]. The fair use arguments in that case are particularly interesting, since they cover the requirement for a collector's guide to be complete to be successful and the transformative nature of the use, both of which would apply to the use of baseball statistics in fantasy games.

Complicity

[Flying pig]

This is surely all part of the celebrity culture thing. "Celebrities" are created by lazy media sources (because, for instance, doorstepping drug addicted models is easier and cheaper than doing serious investigative journalism into drug addiction.) Then the celebrities decide that they no longer want the invasion of privacy...but, if it stops, so will their earnings soon after. In the same way, with artificially hyped games, the team owners want publicity because this creates a television and newspaper audience and so generates revenue, but then they decide that everybody must pay to have access to their "content" - which risks removing the popular activities which generate a demand for the content.

Let them do it and let them succeed. The faster that games return to a stadium only activity, the faster that television goes into terminal decline, the faster so-called celebrities disappear up their own anuses, the quicker we might get back to a society in which people actually do things instead of just consuming images and sounds. There is something deeply wrong in a society in which a basketball player is paid more than an entire team of Aids researchers, and advertising copywriters are paid more than government ministers.

IANAL but...

[unborracho]

It seems like the MLB would be making the right move by simply letting them license. If they were to win, this would also allow other leagues such as the NFL to make the exact same argument and win by default based on this ruling. MLB Absolutely has the rites to take the Baseball historical data, archive it in a database, call the database scheme and raw data their intellectual property and sell queries to whoever is willing to pay the per-query fee.

If the argument here is "can they refuse service to this company legally?", I think that is much different than making the argument "MLB owns baseball data and no one else can use it without permission". The latter would never hold up in court.

here's one they can keep

[pintomp3]

100% of my household thinks this is going too far. what's next? having a really good memory outlawed? i'm tired of the arguement "we lose money if.." maybe that's why drugs are illegal; drug dealers complained that "we would lose money if drugs were legal". it all makes sense now.. lemme get back to my drugs.

That depends

[Daath]

That depends! If the MLB collected the statistics, and just gave their customers some sort of database, spreadsheet or whatever, then of course they should get money for it.
If the fantasy league themselves have collected the statistics, then of course the MLB should not get a cent.

Re:That depends

[Animats]

No. Doesn't work that way. Feist vs. Rural Telephone. Copyright protects only originality, not facts. See Feist vs. Rural Telephone. That's why you can scan in a phone book and put a search engine online.

You can't copyright raw information

[crankyspice]

Facts and figures cannot themselves be protected by copyright (though the selection and presentation of them can, in a very limited form). That was established pretty unambiguously in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991).

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?c ourt=US&vol=499&invol=340 [findlaw.com]

There may be some protection under the 'hot news' doctrine (International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918) http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?c ourt=US&vol=248&invol=215 [findlaw.com] ), but I'm pretty sure modern courts would follow the reasoning of the 2nd Circuit (though not binding on non-2nd Circuit courts, unlike the Supreme Court opinions cited above, which are binding on all U.S. courts) in National Basketball Association v. Motorola, Inc., 105 F.3d 841 (2d Cir. 1997) http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/105_F3d _841.htm [cornell.edu] ...

In summary, MLB can shove it, IM(ns)HO.

Re:You can't copyright raw information

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Sir,

Your legal precendents are no match for our crack team of high priced lawyers.

To ensure this fact, we have purchased the rights to the rights to the facts concerned in the cases you sight. As a result, any lawyer or judge who considers them will be forced to retire, without pension.

If you object to this, make moves to object, are seen or heard to object, or are seen or heard to be in a position facilitating objection, we reserve the right to legally force you in bankruptcy and/or exile and/or prision and/or Guantanamo Bay.

Yours,

MLB Inc.

Thought For The Day: 'Greed Is Good.'

Re:You can't copyright raw information

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I knew the difference between sight and cite, but for some unbeknownst reason, as I was typing the paragraph, my brain "heard" cite, but decided to spell it sight.

It would be interesting to find out why this happens, paticularly in regard to words like "there","their","they're","whether","weather" etc. Some people aregue that as the english language evolves, such spellings will become redundant, and meaning will be gleaned from context, as it is in speech. This seems somehow wrong to me.

You will get the odd

Copyright of Non-Creative Works?

[CodeBuster]

It is my understanding that the relevant codes in the United States copyright laws formally define what is meant by creative work and what may be protected by copyright as any original creation of authorship in a tangible medium, although the law has been amended to include certain creative works, including computer software, which are not tangible in the traditional sense of the word. However, it would be quite a stretch to interpret the gathering of raw statistics, baseball statistics in this instance, as a creative work. If there is some other work created based upon these statistics, such as the formulation of a thesis or comparison, which is then written up in an article or paper and published then that would more readily, depending upon the content, fall under the definition of a creative work. In the practical sense it is perfectly reasonable for major league baseball, or indeed any other information broker, to gather and maintain a database of these statistics and charge whatever they wish for factual reports of this information. It seems to me that the statistics themselves, especially when presented outside the context of the game in which they originally occurred as part of broader comparisons, are not protected by copyright and therefore anyone who wants to sell such information is not impeded by copyright laws.

Note: I am not a lawyer and I do not mean for this to be taken as legal advice. It is merely the opinion of a private citizen and is presented as-is.

What?

[eekrano]

Did you hear who won the Sox game? Yeah it was great! Who won? I can't tell you, I only sent the MLB a check for $20 in royalties and I already told 10 people. Seriously... if this one goes the wrong way if moving to Canada.... yeah I said it.

So, are the stats made up numbers?

[Jamesday]

The key question: Is MLB claiming that the statistics are original creative works (made up numbers:)) it can get a copyright on or facts? :)

Probably using the publicity rights of the players instead of copyright law. Not really good to claim you're making up the numbers... :)

So in a year or so..

[LokiOfRagnar]

Unless the MLB can claim IP on the game itself they will loose out eventually. In a year or so the fantasy leagues will be more competitive, more interesting and more commercial then anything the stadiums have to offer. Anyways, any sportsorganization that claims to have a world series but fails to have a team present at the real world cups does not have a legitimate claim on existence anyways..

cheers,
Loki.

Not just MLB, NBA sues too

[monkeyboy87]

I recall that the NBA was suing companies that were sending out the scores of games over some wireless pager or cells phones. I guess this means that you can pay the money for the license to a seat, but forget about SMS'ing somene or telling anyone what the score was.

Facts versus ideas

[Antony-Kyre]

There's a difference between facts and ideas. Facts simply exist, they are what they are. However, ideas, such as stories, which aren't necessarily facts, should be handled differently. It would be one thing to say certain facts about a certain person. It would be entirely different to go out and tell a fictional story someone has copyrighted.

Well that wasn't so smart...

[Max Nugget]

Considering that MLB would almost certainly lose if they tried to make this argument in court, looking their gift horse in the mouth was not the smartest of ideas, methinks.

They were getting PAID by companies to license information that's in the public domain. They should have kept to chuckling in the boardroom and stayed quiet on what was a great deal for them. Instead they've thrust the issue into the spotlight. If this company succeeds in court, more and more licensees may decide that licensing stats from the MLB is a stupider idea than, say, using those stats for free...

Glen Phillips Quotalicious

[bmo]

"We now live in the ownership society. They own it, and you can rent it for a fee"

Glen Phillips - August 30, 2005, Jammin Java Cafe'

--
BMO

control information

[pintomp3]

is this the begining of being able to rewrite history? if only one holder is allowed to posses the statistics, won't it make it difficult to disprove the information? can dell start saying "only .01% of our computers break in the first 10 years"? i could just be over-reacting, but officially single-sourcing information, if that's where this might lead, is a scary road.

Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeroes...

[starX]

Obligatory Onion link. [theonion.com]

Next logical step

[goldcd]

is surely a big swirly pattern on the screen after each match
"You will forget who won, you will forget who won, you won't pirate our stats."
It must really piss them off with all the DRM they're intent on sticking on media they can't actually do this. Just imagine the fun of being able to resell you the same match every week. In fact they'd just need to tape one game, fire the players and broadcast the tape in loop.
New legislation will be passed making the Person2Person sharing of stats illegal - MLB agents will be kicking down the doors of mothers whose children discussed results in the playground.

I think what they're saying here is

[advocate_one]

that if you want statistics for running your fantasy league, then you either get a license and pay them for them, or else do the legwork yourself and compile your own stats by putting your own trackers into all the games and doing the number crunching with results you've obtained for yourself... of course, if you try that approach, we'll soon see them claiming copyright in the names of the players...

Precedent in Cricket?

[malkavian]

Cricket and Baseball have similarities in that they're both highly statistics based games.
In Cricket, the scores are most definitely public domain. I used to work for a company called Cricinfo [cricinfo.com] as one of their admins in it's earlier days, and it's stats database (statsguru) is arguably the most complete source of statistics for cricket in the last few decades.
It was started by a group of fans into an ongoing company, simply because the stats on cricket were public domain. And it's raised a good sum of money in sponsorship for cricket along the way, and been a focal point for fans around the world.
Now, if the statistics for Cricket were deemed to be in the public domain, as it was quite possible for people to watch the match, tell someone else, and they could discuss it anywhere at any time, what makes Baseball different (apart from the fact that the organisers are trying to gouge money on everything they possibly can)?

Angering die-hard fans = Stupid

[optimus2861]

One thing that I haven't seen brought up in the comments yet is how bloody stupid MLB is being here. The people who play in fantasy leagues are quite likely to be die-hard baseball fans, the ones who can rattle off all the stats for their favorite players at the drop of a hat, watch all the scores & hilights to keep up with the players they've got on their fantasy teams, talk a lot about the sport with their friends, and of course, go to games. Telling these fans that they can't play in their fantasy leagues any more because the stats are MLB property and nobody's allowed to use them would seem to me a sure-fire way to provoke a very angry reaction amongst those fans. Now they're not going to games, they're not spending money on your stuff, and they're telling their friends to do the same, and telling them why.

There's no win here for MLB. Either they lose the case, which makes them look stupid, or they win it, which makes them look heavy-handed. One would think any competent PR person could tell them as much -- assuming MLB has any, that is.

Re:Countering indifference

[bit01]

A bad ruling on this could create precedents that affect you whether you badly. e.g. What are you going to do when you want to publish software bug statistics?

Something like this needs to be fought at every stage.

That's a problem with the law. The stroke of a pen can restrict the freedoms of millions of people.

---

Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.

Re:The really question is...

[niktemadur]

That's right. Hu is on first. Don Hu, a chinese gentleman. Frank Watt is on second and Pierre Iaduneau from Quebec is on third.