Slashdot Mirror
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?"
What, we can own facts now?
Somehow I'm not at all surprised.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
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
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.
A blog about stuff.
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
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.
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barry bonds record 73 home runs should be public domain and the public should know that he was juiced up when he hit all of them. the record books are tainted now, 61 is still the record. or 60 if you want to argue the number of games.
Spiral out. Keep going...
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©...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Sorry.
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?
You know part of me almost wants the ruling to (initally) be in favor of the MLB. Then it goes all the way to the supreme court where we get a firm ruling that people cannot own facts or simple ideas. Of course the Blackberry/RIM case affected a lot of people in and connected to the government and yet we still here no real discussion on reforming our ridiculous IP laws.
In any case, remember that Simpson's episode with Mark McGuire everyone? The MLB IS WATCHING YOU SO BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU POST! THEY HAVE SPY SATELLITES!
Oh, and I for one welcome our new MLB overlords.
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
HDGary secures my bank
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
Engineers also speak PDE, only in a different dialect.
MLB wants to cash in on the growing, and lucrative, world of fantasy sports. Services now are supplying stats that Major League Baseball collects and disseminates itself for their fantasy leagues. I think part of it is that MLB would like to make some money off of it to pay their own statisticians for their work. I also know that Bud Selig is a money-hungry scumbag, so it's not all pure intentions.
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".
The number .276 is brought to you by the MLBPA.
Seriously, copyrights have been getting out of hand recently. This is rediculous. How can you own numbers?!
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Nobody owns them, anymore than anybody owns the fact that D Day was June 6, 1944 or that General Lee lost the Battle of Gettysburg. Not only shouldn't MLB have the right to prevent the fantasy league from using them, the league should demand that MLB refund all the money they've ever collected for them.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
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).
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.
Pining for the fjords
If Major League Baseball wins the right to OWN and license FACTS [shudder], I immediately declare the licensing fee for my fax phone number to be $125,000.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
MLB Player Batting Statistics for 2005
.335 .418 .662 1.080 .331 .383 .447 .830 .331 .385 .513 .899 .330 .430 .609 1.039 .323 .385 .561 .947 .321 .421 .610 1.031 .320 .445 .534 .979 .317 .394 .565 .959 .316 .366 .439 .805 .314 .387 .515 .903 .312 .371 .423 .795 .309 .389 .450 .839 .308 .359 .553 .911 .307 .361 .505 .866 .306 .360 .499 .859 .306 .388 .523 .912 .306 .372 .426 .798 .306 .402 .559 .961 .305 .378 .475 .853 .305 .367 .496 .863
RK PLAYER TEAM AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB BA OBP SLG OPS
1 Derrek Lee ChC 594 120 199 50 3 46 107 15 3 85
2 Placido Polanco Det 501 84 166 27 2 9 56 4 3 33
3 Michael Young Tex 668 114 221 40 5 24 91 5 2 58
4 Albert Pujols StL 591 129 195 38 2 41 117 16 2 97
5 Miguel Cabrera Fla 613 106 198 43 2 33 116 1 0 64
6 Alex Rodriguez NYY 605 124 194 29 1 48 130 21 6 91
7 Todd Helton Col 509 92 163 45 2 20 79 3 0 106
8 Vladimir Guerrero LAA 520 95 165 29 2 32 108 13 1 61
9 Johnny Damon Bos 624 117 197 35 6 10 75 18 1 53
10 Brian Roberts Bal 561 92 176 45 7 18 73 27 10 67
RK PLAYER TEAM AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB BA OBP SLG OPS
11 Sean Casey Cin 529 75 165 32 0 9 58 2 0 48
12 Derek Jeter NYY 654 122 202 25 5 19 70 14 5 77
13 Chad Tracy Ari 503 73 155 34 4 27 72 3 1 35
14 Matt Holliday Col 479 68 147 24 7 19 87 14 3 36
15 Randy Winn Sea 617 85 189 47 6 20 63 19 11 48
16 David Wright NYM 575 99 176 42 1 27 102 17 7 72
17 Brady Clark Mil 599 94 183 31 1 13 53 10 13 47
Jason Bay Pit 599 110 183 44 6 32 101 21 1 95
19 Victor Martinez Cle 547 73 167 33 0 20 80 0 1 63
20 Hideki Matsui NYY 629 108 192 45 3 23 116 2 2 63
RK PLAYER TEAM AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB BA OBP SLG OPS
21 Travis Hafner Cle 486 94 148 42 0 33 108 0 0 79
I got dibs on planck's constant!
A blog about stuff.
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.
Can we see stupid ideas actually enforced!
So much innovation yet so many dumb ones.
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.
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Keep ALL your damn facts private. Make EVERYONE pay for the SLIGHTEST most trivial statistic, like most broken shoelaces in spring training.
And guess how many people will actually give a flying rat's ass about your damned monopoly game then.
You guys are so damned stupid. Entertainment THRIVES on the fans talking about things. You stop them from talking about major league baseball, they'll talk about softball, or semi-pro, or college, or anything but your stupid monopoly. You selfish twits must have left your brains behind with the placenta at birth, and the doctors flushed it down the drain.
Do you really think fantasy baseball DETRACTS from major league baseball? Are you really that stupid? Do you realize how much money those nuts spend on baseball? They're the ones that Hollywood made that movie about (Fever Pitch, I think). They decorate their rooms with baseball posters and go to spring training camps.
You guys are so short sighted you make the RIAA look like a bunch of visionaries.
Infuriate left and right
I bought Avagadro's Constant and the Hubble Constant off eBay, and I own stock in e, pi and the golden ratio.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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?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 ), 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 ...
In summary, MLB can shove it, IM(ns)HO.
geek. lawyer.
Murdoch's News Corp. recently gained the rights to abject disgust, as it is currently the most thriving sentiment, running rife throughout what was once a great country, the United States.
And now, no sports at all. Go wash yourself with vigor.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
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.
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.
-- Eekrano
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...
Or it took an appeals court to rule that a cow is not a motor vehicle.
Fight Spammers!
Stupidity, horrible stupidity, American IP laws
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.
maybe the American lunar expedition did not leave Hollywood at all.
This is similar to the *AA wanting to own any data produced, more importantly, charge for the use of that data. Comoditization of data is the first step down a long path to total corruption. Now, that was a lot to say in one sentence, but it goes like this: When any corporate entity can 'own' data, despite the fact that the data is out in the public use and domain (not as in for public domain) then the government granting those rights has lost all control, or more likely, never had control of anything. When a television program is broadcast on public airwaves, all the content of that publication is in the public domain... period. To say that it is owned, and use of it is licensed would require a Non-disclosure or licensing agreement be signed with the sale of every baseball stadium ticket. All baseball and opera (etc) critics would also need a license to tell the public what kind of 'data' can be obtained when attending the game or show. Essentially, this can be extrapolated to say that any company who employs you has to sign a license agreement to ensure that all data pertaining to you, and your work efforts is not used without appropriate license fees.
What I mean to say is that if this is upheld, then all hell breaks loose on data ownership. Several questions can then be asked:
Can people use my data without paying me? As in, if I participate in a survey, what licenses need to be signed? Can credit card companies or even the grocery store collect data about me without paying a fee?
It all sounds silly, but the principle is sound, data can not be owned, data wants to be free.
I agree that if you have a unique way of presenting data, you can charge for that as long as people will pay for your presentation of it. Imagine what the world would be like if CNN was only shown to people that paid for it by pay per view? Now imagine what the license key scheme would be like? How in the hell would sports bars work?
The best thing is for some of this silliness to come to light as legislation, then we can all tell legislators what we think... personally, I think baseball should just go away... problem solved, but that is just me.
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It is in questions like this that we find insanity^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcthulhu^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hthe crux of the matter.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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.
If they want people to not know things about baseball players, they need to not say things about baseball players.
If I compile the statistics from reading the newspaper, or watching baseball games, or listening to the radio, they can take their licensing fees and stick 'em.
Having said that, I think that compiling baseball statistics is one of the most silly things to do ever...but that's just my opinion.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
After all, MLB is one of the few 'bidnesses' in the US that has permission from the US to engage in an otherwise illegal cartel and is allowed to conduct an open trade in human beings. There is probably nothing they believe they can't get away with. I suppose the license on the ticket will now state that persons in attendance will not be allowed to talk about the game without the payment of an additional fee.
The person or entity that does the actual recording of the data owns it. So if only Alice records the number of home runs, then Alice is the sole owner of that data. She can charge whoever uses that information. Now if Bob goes to all the games and records the home runs as well, then he can charge for his copy. He can even release it into the public domain and screw Alice over. Such is the nature of intellectual property.
Another example would be a biography. I write the story of my life, thus I own the copyright. No one can go and plagarize that. They need to do their own independent research to biograph my life. They can't copy willy nilly from my autobiography, lest they want an interesting final chapter.
Moral of the story: record your own damn data.
Prediction of story: sports fans unite create an open stastics site.
- Nolan Eakins http://nolan.eakins.net/
I tried. I really did. I just couldn't generate any concern particles reading this.
I have my own IP battles here in geek-land. If baseball fans are suddenly forced to become aware of the IP madness all around them, great. I suspect they won't be much use however; the MLB must only convince fans of a correlation between their IP rights and the construction of some new stadium or the acquisition of some uber pitcher.
This is news about IP and Baseball. The requisite parties are: lawyers and sports geeks. I'd rather the story appear on the non-MLB owned baseball fanboy sites (are there any?) and not here.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Obviously my friend, you can't comprehend the weight of this decision and how the outcome can have implications to almost every part of your life. Hopfully, this is just someone trying to set a legal precedent simply because it's not been set before. With the way things are going, it seems that unless a decision has been made in the courts sometime before preventing an action, anything can be done. If you're imagination isn't creative enough to work out where this could end up, read 1984, written by a guy with a name exactly like that of a river running through Ipswich, England (I don't dare say his name, incase his publisher owns it...)
I'd suggest to go the Civil Code of the USA and read carefully the chapter titled "About Ownership". ... crap!
I'd bet that, like almost all other Civil Codes all over the world, it states that you can claim your exclusive ownership if and only if none else can prove the same.
If those results have been published in any way, anyone could have been collecting and arranging them in some suitable form.
You could claim the ownership on the collection (i.e. a file), but not on the data themselves, because they have been public and publicly available (on sport newspaper and TV shows).
It's more likely to be an action related to some stock market move. That is, it is very likely
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
don't quite remember who said this originally, but it reminds me of a good quote...
"Without statistics, baseball would be as boring as golf."
And indeed it would be in my opinion. Also, that little blurb about telecasts being the sole property of MLB and cannot be redistributed or used for purposes other than home entertainment that they play in the commercials sometimes leads me to believe that they actually do have the right to the statistics, though i would like to see it released into public domain.
Linux is to the internet as Duct Tape is to the Universe.
I hereby claim ownership and IP rights to the symbol indicating the decimal point, and symbols indicating the numbers one through five, inclusive. Any derivative or combinatorial works are also covered under this IP. Reasonable licensing use and non-exclusive distribution rights are available.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
I'm thinking that the first lawyer who conceives of a line of arguments should patent them as their intellectual property. Then the courts and eventually congress would have to deal with defendants who might not be able to afford to license their defense strategy.
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.
I watched the news today as some reporter talked about the weather. Someone should seiously think about licensing the weather, so when someone else reports it, they can charge them a fee for it.
WTF is a "gross" of statistics? (I know, a gross is 144 units).
Anyway, from TFA "CBC had been paying the players' association 9 percent of gross". Stupid submitter, useless editors. Par for the course at Slashdot. (Golfing statistics are still free, I hope.)
I think that the only way to solve this is to let MLB own the rights to the statistics. But every conceivable use of these statistics will be considered "fair use."
The implications for "privately owned public statistics" in the stock/forex market would really be interesting.
Imagine, you wanted to purchase Google stock but before doing so wanted to analyze the last 8 quarters of earnings declarations as well as their stock prices. But alas, you need to buy the statistics before you decide whether to buy the stock or not.
A forex merchant could charge you a fee for their dollar-euro conversion rate, before actually changing your money.
Since such a model monetizes trivial information, guess who'd be interested in dreaming up possibilities? Goo....
i managed to spend just over 10 years playing this sport called professional baseball... 3 arm surgeries, angle repaired (too many hangovers and omelette house bfasts at 3am during 14 hour bus rides to Midland got me i guess) they are just killing themselves with this last stats idea... come on, i played for parts of 3 or 4 seasons in the 'bigs' and ended up with 50 some odd appearances (left-handed reliever no less) and now you are saying my 5+ ERA is worth something? will i ever see the .00000001 my meager numbers earned? i don't care... but i don't want them charging someone to 'download' it or 'view' it or 'print' it... gawd they have some balls (no pun intended)
i was against the strike in 1995 and while my arm was shot by then, i felt i could still came out of 'retirement' to stage a final 'comeback'... too bad my arm had a different story than what my head was telling me.. :)
i love that game... learned a lot from it... good AND bad... i truly hope they figure things out so that i will be able to take my sons to a game someday and not be embarrassed...
sig goes here!
http://humorix.org/articles/2005/10/baseball/ I now have definate proof that humorix does predict the future! (Either that, or slashdot has produced a new record by reporting news 2 months late) Hmm... better not go to the theatre in 2011 (http://humorix.org/articles/2005/12/head-explodes /)
This story once again points out the deep absurdity of IP laws, and the complete lack of any absolute authority for laws in general, or what Montaigne referred to as the "mystical foundation of authority" in law:
"Laws are now maintained in credit, not because they are just, but because they are laws. It is the mystical foundation of their authority; they have none other." -- from "Essais 3", ch. 13
In the information age, its clear that the idea of ownership of specific sets of ones and zeros is pretty ridiculous and only continues because of government approved thuggery. Its interesting to see the ways that even this attempt at authority is being gradually eroded in the 21st century.
Well, obviously not all the sheeple who are satisfied with eating McDonalds and watching Reality TV -- the modern day panem et circenses -- as they sleepwalk towards a police state.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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...
"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
Big name people do have some rights to their own images. For instance if I make a bunch of T shirts with pictures of Barry Bonds, he can come after me for damages. He owns the right to exploit his own image.
On the other hand, if I'm a newspaper reporter and I snap a picture of him, somewhere he shouldn't be, doing something that he shouldn't do, he can't do anything*. That kind of thing happens all the time and the courts have ruled that by becoming a public figure, you lose some rights that the rest of us have.
My guess is that the fantasy league will win this one.
There are a lot of fantasy leagues out there for different sports. Most of them are just a bunch of guys who hang out at the bar together. Good luck controlling them. You can't. What you can do is alienate your fan base. The fans took a long time to forgive the leagues after the strike. This kind of thing will just aggrevate them more. It's kind of like all the good will the riaa wins by suing twelve year olds for their parents life savings and all the money they will ever make in their lifetimes. Once the people feel they are being played for patsies, they will quit buying tickets/albums/whatever.
*Actually he could sue for libel and libel chill is a fact of life; but thats another story.
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 delivered with a broadcast is copyrighted, so any transcription of those statistics is copyrights, and so those compilations can not be delivered to the fantasy leagues in the first place (before individual facts are extracted from the compilations).
Pretty revolting, but there it is.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
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.
Rural vs. Feist. 9-0 decision by the Supremes.
Only takes an idiot to pass a law to violate that.
Oh, wait...that's what we have in Washington, DC!
"Eustace? Eustace? Are you there? Are you there?" = John Leeming
Obligatory Onion link.
I think that america has been infected with Mad-IP-disease ... and as a european, I sincerely hope we can restrain the virus on your continent.
I agree that this is a stupid move, but you're all missing the important angle. Obviously it is impossible to "own" statistics such a batting average of .320 for the year. The numbers are public and the math is straightforward. MLB is arguing that they should be the sole "owner" of the association between statistics and actual players. MLB wants to protect their "property" and they no longer want to let fantasy leagues associate player names with statistics without coughing up some dough. I think that MLB should get some cash from these fantasy leagues that generate revenue; after all, without the MLB they wouldn't be making money. The people who "play" (and I use that term loosely) fantasy baseball are probably the same people who pay for subscription radio broadcasts and tv packages, and they are probably willing to pay for fantasy leagues. Many "professional" fantasy leagues are subscription-based, so they are already paying for it anyway. The leagues will just have to charge a little more (pass the cost to the customer). As far as fantasy leagues go, I don't think this will have much of an affect. On the other hand, it doesn't seem right to "own" the link between 73 home runs and Barry Bonds. Sports statistics are really a part of our culture more than anything else.
The 1990 lockout pissed me off. It was a good decade later before I even paid attention to a single game. The 1994 strike didn't help either. It's a bunch of millionaires arguing with a bunch of millionaires. With ticket prices in the stratosphere and crybaby players and owners who only care about the almighty dollar, who really gives a shit besides the stats geeks? Now MLB wants to own the _facts_ of a game? Does MLB Incorporated want to piss off the only people left who are passionate about baseball?
Screw MLB. Who's up for a petition to get NESN to start carrying curling instead of the Sox?
--
BMO
all you bases are belong to us
Sure they do. They belong to whoever recorded and calculated them. You couldn't, however, copyright the statistics so that nobody may record them.
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.
MLB stats are not facts. MLB hires official scorekeepers to record (and make judgment calls that become) its official stats. In many cases, for example, it is up to the official scorekeeper to make a judgment on whether a hit ball is a hit (favorable to the batter's stats) or an error on the fielder (negative to the batter's stats) in the same way that an umpire in the game determines whether a pitched ball is in or out of the strike zone. Like it or not, then, MLB's stats are subjective and biased and a direct product of the hired scorekeepers. As such, they have a strong argument about owning their own stats as intellectual property.
What's being missed out on here is that this just opens up the opportunity for Fantasy Leagues to hire their own statisticians to record the own judgments as stats. One Fantasy League's would differ from another's and, thereby, certain leagues would gain a competitive advantage over others based on the perceived reliability of their stats. It would be nice to see a statistician rise through the ranks of the fantasy leagues and get hired by MLB based on past performance.
Intellectual Property is now officially an oxymoron.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
So what happens if I make up a result (in reqasonable detail), register the copyright, and then major league baseball actually has that result? Do they owe me for breach of copyright? Seems ludicrous, but I'm not sure I see the difference.
that I can now charge the federal gov't for using my information in the national census? I mean, after all, where I live, what I do for a living, who I live with, and how much I paid for everything I own is my intellectual property right?
The english language is in beta. It's evolving but has not yet reached a level of usability.
So fantasy leagues own their fictional results, but MLB don't own their real ones? I can see how that might rile them.
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.
They are charging fantasy leagues. Since many of the fantasy leagues make money off of MLB, why shouldn't MLB charge those fantasy leagues?
I think MLB is greedy too but I don't see the problem in charging the fantasy leagues for stat info when the fantasy leagues make money off of MLB.
Now, if MLB started charging individuals to look up stats, that'd be a completely different situation.
Is it just me or does it not seem that wrong that the "correlation" of statistics and baseball players does indeed belong to the players themselves as far as commercial purposes go.
While the average person should have the right to memorize and discuss any statistics, however, why should a company use the name and statistics together to make money , without the player getting a cut of it.
Isnt this sort of like advertising? This is not something like news reporting. you are not doing this for public information. This is being done so that a select group of people (the members of the fantasy league) can make use of the statistics, and then pay you money for it. In fact the only draw for such a fantasy league is in fact the idea thta you are playing with real statistics. Now if this was for news reporting purposes, i can understand that it hsould not be copyrighted.
If it is not news, and it is being used for commercial purposes, then it should come under the realm of something like advertising. Which makes sense because of the above argument.
just my two bits.
You don't have to read about Paris Hilton, just watch her amateur video like every body else.
YOU FAIL IT 5U><0R!!!!!!1!!
Except you probably don't know what you failed, or why or how. But you should rest assured that people are laughing at you right now.
To avoid the FA tracing the AC parent and sueing his a$$ off, I'm going to suggest that [s]he means match *fixtures*. Match fixers are not in the public domain, either :)
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.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
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...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
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.
-- My Weblog.
Remind me to never bother using up any of my life finding out about this game... sounds really exciting
Something like this would normally infuriate me, but how funny would it be if some random guy was able to patent baseball? I know, there's a bit of 'prior art' there, so the USPO might not let that one slip through. Actually, I'd settle for a patented method for collecting baseball statistics and licensing their use. They would have no choice but to drop the licensing idea; otherwise, they would be infringing on a patent!
While I'm waiting around for that to happen, I think I'll go rebroadcast/retransmit the pictures, descriptions, and accounts of a few Major League Baseball games (and I don't even have verbal consent). Choke on that one, MLB!
What does this mean for web statistics? Who owns them? Does the number of hits a website get mean that I can't say that exactly 0 people have been to my neighbours crappy website without him taking me to court?
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Unless it's been heard before: "Americorp" wins as the new depreciative nickname for the US. I'm going to start calling it that in daily use and stare incredulously at anybody who corrects me. I'm even going to start filling that in as country of residence on tax forms, liscences, etc.
Just curious...
If this kind of thing were allowed it would stop all history being recorded and published.
What they may be able to claim is the version of history they compiled is copyright in whole by themselves. So long as you don;t use them as a source for you information I don't see the have a leg to stand on.
But INAL
Reapeat after me "fscked country"! In the rise and fall of great nation syndrome lets just consider that you are in the freefall part...
realkiwi
Look, if I go to a baseball game and take notes on everything I see, that information is MINE. Sure, other people can have it, too, but I can do whatever I want to with that information, including sell it. However, at the same time, if I create a compilation of the things that I see, and publish it in book or electronic form, I own the copyright to that publication and I am perfectly within my rights to forbid others from using it. However, there is nothing preventing someone else from making their own compilation.
MLB is perfectly correct in this issue. This is no different than map makers enforcing their rights to their publications. The information itself may be public domain, but their publication of that information belongs to them. This is why both map makers and statistics houses make intentional errors in their data. So, if MapQuest copies Rand McNally, Rand will have solid proof in the form of a copied mistake for the court proceedings.
Hi -
p x?id=13182&printer-friendly=y
:)
Don't forget that around 1997 the NBA tried to prevent a wireless provider (Motorola?) from offering real time updates of scores of NBA games in progress. You can read about this below (I have included an excerpt), and how the PGA won a similar case about golf scores:
from:
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/commentary.as
That outcome was a bit surprising, given the decision that another federal appeals court, the 2nd Circuit, reached in 1997. In that case, the National Basketball Association attempted to prevent Motorola from transmitting real-time basketball scores to its pager customers. The court concluded that the NBA had no exclusive rights to facts. The scores of the games in progress could be reported as part of the newsgathering process.
Hmmm...could that NBA lawsuit have been the reason that Charlie Ward said the things he did?
This is utter madness. This is not a creative work, this are facts that are recorded, viewed, and broadcast. The idea of intellectual property is going entirely too far here.
I don't know what Zonks idea about nerds is. But I as being a nerd have never met a nerd interested in baseball (but that's maybe because I am an European nerd. If they would make a baseball-ball with nanotechnology, cool. But who gives a damn about sport statistics. Maybe if it was spiced up a little with math or something. Or that owning statistics was a thread to personal freedom. It would be cool if baseball would be played with pingpong-balls, then it would be definately news for nerds. If you want to (or not) own the statistics of baseball, do what you please. Only a nerd deeply interested in anti-nerdness would consider owning gamestatistics a news topic for nerds. This stuff doesn't matter at all. Zonc, you've been a bad nerd ;-)
It's interesting that you mention those other activities. Let's skip the video games, DVDs, and internet poker and concentrate on hockey (especially hockey, since that sport was offline due to strike for over a year), extreme sports, and arena football. There's a significant difference between them: fan accessibility.
Look at baseball for a moment. It's not like it once was. Exorbitant salaries, big impressive stadiums (which admittedly don't cost the franchises much because they wangle sweetheart deals with desperate city governments), high-priced concessions... well, it's not the family activity it once was unless your last name is Rockefeller, Gates, or Trump. Even then, wanna watch the game on TV? Risky; with blackouts and trades, it's likely that the game being played in your area isn't being televised in your area. Why? Because they want you to go see the game at the stadium!
Baseball has taken on an air of exclusiveness that Joe Sixpack can't handle. He loses interest. He changes the channel... and these other activities are on, they're struggling to get noticed, they feature ordinary people (physical conditioning aside), and they don't make any pretense about owning everything under the sun which has anything to do with them. Or if they do, it makes less sense because the activity hasn't cusped yet.
Even the other stuff has appeals over baseball. Even DVDs: Feature-length films that you can decide when they start or stop? And at less than the cost of stadium seating? And they're reusable? Video games are highly interactive, if not necessarily social unless you have some sort of network hookup. And internet poker and MMORPGs can be very socially rewarding activities if you concentrate on more than just maximizing your score.
Baseball has become a victim of its own size, sense of entitlement, and the fundamental desire to maximize profits. It'd be nice to think that it could return to its old days, but I doubt MLB in its current form could survive the rightsizing that it desperately needs.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
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). Both the newspaper and the fantasy league are reporting sports statistics for profit making, entertainment purposes. There is no distinction based on profit.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
McGwire: Hi, folks! I'm Mark McGwire.
Computer: Big Mac himself. Who'd have thunk it?
McGwire: Young Bart here is right. We are spying on you, pretty much around the clock.
Bart: But why, Mr. McGwire?
McGwire: Do you want to know the terrifying truth, or do you want to see me sock a few dingers?
Crowd: Dingers! Dingers!
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 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)?
Modders!!! Get the real info at the top!!!
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.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
As noted, only in America.........GREED, GREED and more GREED!!!
All your intellectual property are belong to us. No, really, we own the rights to it. And 51% of the human genome. So basically you belong to us.
I think legally it will hold up in court. All that means is that the laws need to be changed.
We should take up a collection for this: Buy the rights to, or patent if unowned, the genes that allow our lungs to process oxygen. Then demand, in court, a $.0001 loyalty fee per breath per person. While entirely silly, it would force the courts to rethink there policies and laws. As a bonus, if they don't reconsider , we'll all be rich.
Note: The intellectualy propery for this idea is soley mine. Anyone using this idea will have to pay me 10% of gross profits.
First of all, no one and no law is ever going to force you to pay royalties for mentioning Barry Bond's 72HR season or the outcome of yesterday's game. Even if the MLB can enforce copyright on the stats as a whole, these things would clearly fall under fair use. That's why we have fair use.
Now, consider this: Fantasy baseball leagues make money. However, in order to do so, they must consume something which the MLB creates. If the MLB were to stop running baseball games, fantasy baseball would be dead in the water. Therefore, under capitalist principles, the MLB deserves a cut of that money.
The real question is whether or not they are being fair in deciding not to renew this deal. I sense anti-competitive behavior here, since I believe the MLB runs its own fantasy league.
Let's pretend for a moment that we're talking about WWE Wrestling. In WWE Wrestling, the combat is performed by actors and the result is fixed from the start. The production company decides how the fight will pan out and who will win, with the hope that the fight and outcome will be interesting enough to attract viewers. The progression and outcome of the match is therefore a creative work, funded by and created by the TV company. You could argue that the match outcome is as protected by copyright as the set and costume designs, theme tune and so forth.
If we apply the situation to actual sports such as baseball, the only difference is that the outcome is decided (to a certain extent) by the players. The players put in effort to practice and train to become good at their sport. The players are paid for their "performance", so any creative work they produce while on the job is work for hire and thus owned by the company. The outcome of the match is a derivative work resulting from the skill of the players, which is itself owned by the company. Therefore the outcome is owned by the company.
I guess that's roughly how the thinking goes, anyway. I can't say that I completely agree with it, but there you are: there is something resembling a logical explanation.
There was a case over a bargain site awhile ago where they got into a lawsuit with Staples or OfficeMax where they claimed people were scanning and posting their ads online. Of course in the case they argued that their ads and weekly inserts are copyrighted to them, but the real case is by publishing these weekly ads earlier than they wanted, competitors would be able to respond.
So people stopped scanning the ads and started listing the items and prices and they also claimed that was copyrighted. So this case went on and the basic outcome of the case was that the stores on the copyrights to the images and ads and placement, but the item names and prices are facts which are not copyrightable.
HD Trailers
Simply copyright the next logical progression of the stats. Player X hit 10 home runs this season, copyright number 11 and license it back to the player and the league for one million dollars (insert evil laugh.)
Just think, the next time Bonds hits a home run, he could owe you....
"You're not balancing your internal energy with the environment." -Gary Busey
I thought I lost all respect for and interest in MLB during their strike about 10 years ago.
It seems I was wrong. With story, I've gained interest, at the cost of what ever small amount of respect for the league that was hiding srespect deep within.
With that quote about people who write history, write it in their favour, popping into my mind. I can't help but wonder if the MLB is successful in this endeavor, will some one be able to have his record altered to ensure entry to the hall of fame. Or past World Series winners could be revised. Maybe the Cubs didn't lose a world series in 1945.
Laziness is a virtue, anyone who bothers to tell you otherwise, is clearly lacking it.
This is a strange article indeed.
Anyone can take their time to compile a list of facts for the whole season of whatever type of sports.
Let say that you spend a week crunching numbers of the game, players, scoring stats, faults, homeruns, dropped balls etc and put it into a spreadsheet (or database or whatever), I would say that you have copyright on THAT LIST. Not the statistics itself.
It seems to me that MLB is confused about the whole issue. They can of course charge for others to use their composed list of statistics, but how the *hell* can they even think that there is a law to "protect" the facts from being used!? Dumbasses
Even the slashdot posting anti-script agrees:
"please type the word in this image: disaster"
Since politicians are nothing more than actors with artificially created identities, would this, if successful, not set a precedent that would allow all politicians to protect their "identities" in the same way? i.e. all of the facts they spew throughout their lives would become their property and thus the ability to gather facts on a politician for investigation would be under their control?
Well, "Barry Bonds hit a 400ft home run into the left-field upper decks in the 8th inning" sounds like a description of the game to me. MLB has actually been claiming ownership on game facts for a few years now.
It sucks, but if you dont like it, stop paying them. They'll take the hint.
This space for rent.
I always thought that big (C) on the Chicago Cubs jerseys was a rather ordinary-looking logo. Now we know the real truth.
This doesn't seem that different from the NY Mass Transit Authority going after the site that was publishing subway/bus route maps for ipods. Basically, the info itself isn't protected by law (ie, you can freely draw someone a map and charge them for it) but the actual map they drew is protected and can only legally be used with their permission on their terms. I would think this would be a similar situation. MLB keeps a database of all the statistics for every game. To reference their compiled data I would think would be protected similarly. To watch the game and jot down the actual statistics will always be fair game. I guess they would have to prove in court that the fantasy leagues are acquiring data from the MLB database and republishing it (which I imagine IS the case) but Im pretty sure they could never win in a case that gives them the rights to the actual facts themselves. It makes sense, though. Plenty of companies compile statistical data and charge for its use and/or regulate its usage. I think it would be considered a creative work in this respect.
The problem here is that they are not the first to claim IP on data generated at their expense.
I work for a market research firm, so we are always generating huge mountains of data. This data belongs to our client even if we gathered it. If we sponsor the study, then the data belongs to us and we can do as we please.
MLB is no different, they own everything that relates to MLB games, and they pay to grind these statistics, so the numbers are theirs.
Now, say you sit down and you watch every frickin game, and you run the numbers yourself, then I bet you can make a case that the data is yours. Of course MLB can CYA this easily by adding a disclaimer to their broadcasts and the ticket stubs for each game.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
Many people are missing the point here. What this is about, or what it should be about, is the protection of the exploitation of Major League Baseball's statistical database as a whole. They have collated these statistics themselves and as I it see are under no obligation to make them completely open source. What they are entitled to prevent is other entities using their statistics to profit. However, if someone wants to collate their own database from independent research (which may or may not cite MLB's in places), and profit from that, then they should be allowed to do so also. Of course you can't copyright facts, and that's why I believe in a liberal amount of "fair use" in this matter. Sure, provide searchable statistics on the web site, but that doesn't mean that everyone has a right to a complete dump of the whole database.
Caveat: I have dabbled in fantasy baseball once or twice, but I just can't get excited about it.
MLB has been doing their best to rein in "their" IP for years. They tried it with sports photographers a number of years ago by not allowing them to sell their photographs for anything but news. These beat photographers sure as heck can't make a living off of what the papers are paying them. Selling a few images here and there is what helps pay the mortgage and, at the same time, provides positive press for MLB. The photographers en masse went to MLB and said if we can't sell them then we'll go shoot weddings and your sport will get zero images in the newspapers. MLB relented.
Let's go deeper into the onion. If stats are not the property of MLB, then game manufacturers can use these stats to build into their games. If they've got the stats, then who needs MLB/MLBPA licensing?
And now down one more level, if MLB can license the stats, why can't they license the results. In turn, can Las Vegas casinos then accept bets if they don't pay MLB a portion of the take? MLB could end up with the rest of Pete Rose's earnings.
And now down a crazier level... If newspapers don't license the results, can they publish them in the newspaper? And if they're not required to license them, then why is fantasy baseball required to? After all, they're both making money off of the results. This all becomes ugly issues and more negative press for MLB.
Regardless of whether MLB wins in court, any money that they make sure as hell won't go to the players. Not that they particularly need it (because they don't), but it's the owners making a buck on the players backs (and arms and legs and...) that they won't account for when they cry poverty and whine that they don't have money for that new stadium. But you tax payers certainly do or we're gonna move.
MLB needs to pull their heads from the exit end of their digestive tract and realize that for many folks fantasy baseball is the only reason that they still give a damn about the sport. And they can't afford to lose many more fans than they all ready have.
Starting next week, all passwords will be entered in Morse code
I've been a fan of baseball my whole life. I have pictures on my wall of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, and Nolan Ryan. I have participated in Rotisserie Baseball Leagues since 1989. And I have studied baseball statistics since I was a kid and asked my dad how to compute batting average. If the Major League Baseball owners win this court case, I will drop professional baseball completely. I stood by baseball during the strikes, lockouts, and other stuff, but this is taking greed to a new level.
This is just the warm up act. Our economy has shifted from making things to brain share products. When 80% of the value of the average company is brain share (I personally hate the term IP) then it's no surprise what area they're going to get silly about when looking to increase revenues. The trend isn't any surprise, but I'm continually amazed in how it manifests in daily life.
Outsource manufacturing is going to come back to bite us right in our big fat collective ass. It already is in many ways. Trying to copyright baseball statistics is just one more symptom of a much deeper economic disease.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
MLB has ruined the game, might as well ruin the fantasy games as well. I used to watch baseball in the 70's and very early 80's but since about 1982 I have not watched a game since. I did not even watch the Bay Bridge world series between the Giants and the A's and that has been the only games I have been interested in for decades.
Grandpa told me about Baseball,
It lasted slightly longer than hockey...
It would seem to logically follow that if MLB "owns" the facts about its sport and can copyright them, then I "own" the facts about me and can copyright those. Based on that I should be able to prevent any company from collecting, or selling, my identity or any other information about me, including telemarketers, businesses, or credit agencies. I'm not sure I'd mind that as a result, though I don't personally think MLB's argument has a leg to stand on. Fact is fact is fact.
So where do I sign up for the rights to the next American war?
And does anyone know who holds the rights to the previous wars? CNN? Spielberg?
The Slashdot community thinks
Excuse me? Who the hell died and made you god, such that you think that you can state with any certainty what I or other participants are thinking? I never said you could speak for me!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Way to go, MLB. Kill off your last remaining set of fans. You officially lost me in the 1994 strike, but my interest was on the decline anyway at that point.
Seriously, I think that fantasy leagues are the only thing keeping baseball alive now. I have no clue why they are so popular, and I personally just don't get the whole fantasy league thing. But how can MLB NOT get it?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Or should it be: Who Cares About Baseball Statistics?
"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"."
/rant
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 asterisk next to them.
Of course, these things did happen during the course of a game/season. And MLB claims that any accounts of the game (written or otherwise) are the property of MLB -- this would include statistics, since they are an account of the game.
As I see it, if MLB can own the copyright on the video of the game, then they can own the copyright on what happened during the game. The two are one and the same.
The answer, to me, is that neither should be valid except during live broadcast of the game. This preserves the MLB television revenue, while keeps fans and others happy by allowing them to have later use of the game / statistics / etc.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Fantasy baseball increases fan interest. Many of us play in free leagues because it's fun and it makes watching the games more interesting. In their quest to make a buck, MLB would lose fans-- many of us, myself included, have no interest in paying for fantasy baseball and would watch much less baseball if the fantasy league didn't exist.
LordBodak's journal.
First off, I'm not a big baseball fan. Sure, I'll cheer for the Twins, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over them. I'll concede that statistics are a big part of baseball mostly because there isn't much to the game. After all, we're talking about grown men hitting a ball with a stick and running around bases. It doesn't exactly require the most athleticism from its participants. A "big" play in baseball isn't nearly as exciting as a big play in football or basketball.
The reason that this could be a big deal is because MLB is saying that statistics are such an integral part of baseball that they feel the need to "protect" them. So why can't I apply the same thought to my own personal information? Why should other companies profit from selling my personal information? Shouldn't I have the same rights to control my "statistics" just like MLB?
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
There is a great book on the history of stats in baseball, "The Numbers Game : Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics".
Those who ran baseball didn't really know what they had when it came to people's fascination with the numbers of baseball. One newspaper man started publishing basic numbers from some games, with the early calculated stats, like Batting Average, and people ate it up. It wasn't until a bit later that more statistics based on the basic numbers started being created, and even today, ESPN, Stats Inc., and other outlets occasionally create new ways to process the numbers (like range stats, true clutch stats, etc.)
MLB and the Players' Association need to be careful not to shoot themselves in the foot, since Fantasy Baseball generated a high level of additional interest in all games, not just local market games.
ESPN and other sites even show line stats with game scores, as well as offering special Fantasy segments on their shows. Don't mess with these additional markets and marketing opportunities.
If someone sends agents to all the games and compiles a set of stats on thier own. They can use it. They cannot go mining into someone else's database and sell the results.
Does this even apply to a database? If someone goes thru the trouble of assembling the batting avergage for every player, and then creates a database out of it, I would think that database belongs to the person who created it. If they choose to sell it, that is their right. If they do not want to sell it to you, that is their choice. I think it's a database the article is talking about, and not the "facts" themselves.
Do Slashdot editors even bother to RTFA? Apparently not.
Stupid Slashdot summary makes no sense,
"Basically, they had been licensing the statistics for nine cents (US) per gross from the Major League Baseball Players Association."
Until you read the article and learn,
"Before the shift, CBC had been paying the players' association 9 percent of gross."
Is it too much to ask Slashdot editors to get their heads out of their asses long enough to make sure the summary bears minimal resemblance to the story being linked to?
- Fzz
Both occur.
A copyright is what the owner has, that cannot be taken away. A restriction is what everyone else gets, to prevent them from trying to infringe upon it, set either by governmental authorities or the artist in conjunction with those authorities.
You have the "right" to free speech; i am "restricted" from interfering with it.
In this case, they may or may not have the right to govern discussion regarding players' technical performance, but the question is to what extent the statistics are an original work.
This determines how restricted the rest of us will be legally, in what we do with it.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
-- which means your point about the methods being "trivial" is far from true. Examples:
Real baseball wonks like to keep track of such stats as how often a player hit a fly ball, a ground ball, a ball to short left, a ball to deep right, a ball with a certain trajectory, and so on. That's for batting. For fielding the game used to maintain a simple percentage representing plays in which someone participating and errors they committed, but the list of fielding stats (still in very active developement) has increased dramatically to include "range factor" at first (how many plays someone makes per game on average) , adjusted range factors that look at the balls hit toward them (compensating for any tendency of a pitcher to encourage or discourage balls hit to third base for example), ratings of throwing arms, and so on...
This is a set of information that, until very recently, baseball didn't have around. And before someone says that fantasy leagues don't use the more esoteric stuff -- they're exactly the people who usually want it. It was a group of hard core fans, rallying around the whole Bill James "baseball abstract" "sabermetrics" way of thinking, that created a demand for the welter of new information, and who initially organized people to gather that info.
The effort that goes into gathering those stats is far, far, far from "trivial." It takes an army of folks scoring and tracking and so on, and lots of technology, to get that data down and to keep it in a usuable form. That Barry Bonds hit 70 home runs is public information, sure. That he pulls fastballs X percentage of the time, or hits a certain percentage from certain areas of the strike zone, or tends to watch pitches at a certain pitch count in his at bats, those are not immediately obvious from the usual box score. With the trajectory of batted balls, even the methods used to control records of that would not be apparent to Joe fan. MLB (or whoever) invests a lot of effort to get that information.
From the MLB perspective, individual teams also invest serious money in trying to develop their own stat models as a competitive advantage.
I'm not sure where the line is, and MLB probably needs to find a way to sell this to its fans better. Alienating fantasy leagues is idiotic. That's their "base." But this ain't as simple as trying to copyright obvious public domain information.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I thought it was the Jocks who cared about sports.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
It should be a no-brainer.
Statistics have not a trace of artistic merit. Copyright is supposed to promote the arts and sciences, not sports. The way the law is written (but usually not interpreted), a work must have some creative element to be copyrightable.
It's like copyrighting weather records (not forecasts). Oh wait, the private forcasters are already lobbying on that one.
"commercially exploit the identities and statistical profiles"
MLB may actually have a leg to stand on here. If I were to print and sell my own baseball cards, I'd lose the case in court.
I can take a picture of a player at a game, and share it with my friends, no problem.
I could also keep track of a particular player's stats and work them to my hearts content for my own purpose.
I think MLB is saying that the 'statistical profile' is akin to a picture of the player. It's all part of the player profile that under US law anyway, isn't public domain.
Key here is 'commercially exploit'. That's the difference between licensing to a Fantasy Sports league, and Joe Schmoe who memorizes every swing ever made by
RIAA maybe? Dinosaurs who think they know how to interact with their fans.
Does the NFL do this? The NBA? Is it coincidence that the two aforementioned sports are more popular and better marketed?
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.
This is superb summation of the problem. I've copied it to show to others. May I license (and sub-license) it from you?
It's by far the most on-topic response thus far, and sure to be a lot more interesting to the three other baseball fans that read slashdot than "I Am Copyrighting Planck's Constant!"
beware the jabberwock, my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
A problem for this company is they set a precedent by licensing the results previously. By their paying of royalties, they were accepting that MLB owned this info. Now they can't get a license, they are taking it to court. Had they never paid a license fee in the past, their case might be stronger.
OTOH, if the newspaper reports the results of a game, does this mean they need to pay a license?
Since MLB has not sued newspapers for printing results of games or in game statistics, does this mean they have set a precedent that the information is public?
The courts have generally frowned upon selective exercise of ownership. Trademark laws are great examples of this.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
period.
i dare them to go after everyone who uses baseball stats.
they'll die of malnutrition try to track everyone down in the first round.
forcing guaranteed impracticality is certain insanity.
somebody please tell lewis black that something this stupid is happening.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
> As I see it, if MLB can own the copyright on the video
> of the game, then they can own the copyright on what
> happened during the game. The two are one and the same.
That's completely inaccurate. The video of the game is copyrighted by whoever filmed it, or paid someone to film it. That clearly falls under established IP guidelines. What happened during the game, however, is a matter of public record.
That the MLB is a branch of the Church of Scientology?
A video of the game and a written account of what happened during the game are NOT one and the same.
I'm not quite sure how this all ties in, but here it goes...
In the past, part of the whole "selling of statistics" deal with MLB had to do with the Players Association (MLBPA), in that, the MLBPA (and in some cases individual players) had to authorize the use of names associated with statistics. This was done because someone was making a profit selling the numbers, and everyone wants a piece of the pie. Barry Bonds was one of the people that pulled their name from the authorized list a few years back. When you looked up fantasy baseball statistics, you saw SFOutfielder (or some such nonsense) instead of Barry Bonds.
There are other sources of baseball statistics such as Elias Sports Bureau, STATS, etc. They are not, AFAIK, officially licensed and authorized by MLB. I don't think any of them are any more error prone than MLB itself, so what's the difference?
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
I already love football so much more than any other sport. Baseball should be looking for ways to be nice and keep fans. But no, they just drive them away.
73 homeruns while juiced. this is no record.
Maris is still the man, fuck the steroid boys.
McGwire, Bonds and Sosa all cheaters.
as far as the stats. go figure. MLB is run by assholes who suck the public tit like no tomorrow
i have to smile when the unmitigated GREED of morons ends up costing them money.
mlb will lose this case, imho. in addition, they will also lose the 9% of gross they were getting prior to letting the "yes men" assuage the irrational greed of the league.
copyright identities? that means that actors, musicians, etc... will not be able to have any of their "attributes" made public by the paparazzi (sp?)...
that just isn't going to happen, people.
the mlb ought to be able to control the data from their database, but others can get the data their own way and it is all good.
legal advice by dumb, dumber and dumbest.
btw, when this goes bust, paul can post on slashdot so i can keep his attorneys in check when they go into "yes, yes, yes" convulsions...
"The more important issue is "identities." If they win this suit, tabloids, "entertainment" magazines about celebrities, news sites which talk about celebrities, etc."
If capitalizing on other's identities (...any such law could not reasonably be limited to protecting celebrities -- in fact public figures should be subject to less protection that private citizens...) is made illegal, then that should put and end to spam, spim, junk mail, junk fax, telephone solicitations, etc., where marketeers realize gains from data related to my identity, right??
Sorry, I made mistake -- it's the written account of the broadcast, not the game, that falls under the copyright (and which I was thinking of). Wouldn't be too surprised though, if MLB tried to push the other side, which apparently is what they're doing. Just wait until the fine print on the reverse of your ticket says that by entering the stadium, you are forfeiting your rights to publish any accounts of the game.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Apple is now selling sports statistics at $.99 per stat....
So perhaps this can be the basis for a new dot-com bubble?
... you can will also
Instead of just coming up with a hopeless business idea like
selling dog-food below cost, and making the difference on the
per-click advertising on the web-site
be able to make money selling statistics about your stock
price as it spirals down into oblivion.
So should every newspaper and news station in the country have to get permission or a license from Major League baseball in order to give factual reports about what happened in each game? Doesn't MLB understand that having people talk about MLB and having MLB permeate popular culture in this way is beneficial to them because it is basically free advertising? Should a fee be paid every time a statment of fact like "The Yankees became the biggest chokers of all time when the Red Sox came back from a three-games-to-zero deficit in the 2004 ALCS to win four games in a row."
Maybe it's the query of the data, and the results, that they own....the data is all there, just the order, and arrangement is copyrighted?
Just a thought.
I suppose one could claim that an undocumented feature has no semantics.
They have no control over people watching from across the street and over the wall of Wrigley Field, for instance.
Long ago Dun & Bradstreet established the facts.
The data itself is not owned by anyone, i.e. public.
The storage, search, format, delivery & availability of the data is very much patentable, copyrightable, and protected.
D&B has been doing just that with Business "facts" since the 1800's.
What I find ironic about this, however, is that MLB is kicking itself pursuing this line of action to begin with. I understand that MLB wants kickbacks from the various fantasy leagues, but the real fact of the matter is that fantasy leagues have allowed for a renewed interest in the sport. You are seeing some of that revenue in increased viewers and such. A person who plays fantasy baseball more than likely watches a lot of baseball, and more than likely goes to games. Baseball doesn't have half the viewership of the NFL, why harm its image further and ostracize those who are trying to enjoy the game in a new way? I'm sure there are people on the top of the piles making money off fantasy baseball, but is there really a lot of harm in that?
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
You gotta ask yourself "How many people would have actually responded if he didn't include that last sentence?"
Last I checked, Facts are public domain and cannot be copyrighted/tradmarked/patented/etc or otherwise monopolized. Don't want people sharing stats? Don't make them public. This means shutting down MLB, I guess. ;)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The most troubling thing to me is the legal precedent this would set. What about video games? Does this mean that the "fact" that I beat Super Mario Brothers in under twenty minutes is technically "owned" by Nintendo? How can someone else possibly lay claim to my own personal accomplishments or actions?
Beginning this year, you will have to pay $4.11 to find out the winner of the World Series of Baseball, and the Superbowl of Football. For an additional $1.67 we will include not only the score of the winning team, but also the losers score as well. What a deal. Act now, and recieve this cheap cardstock printout of the teams logos with their vital scores absolutely free with purchase. Failure to comply with all copyright laws, especially if you share this information with anyone else will result in the gestapo raiding your house and raping your pets while using the DMCA as a condom.
This has been a long standing argument (decades if not longer) in the Chess Community. Whether the actual records of moves belongs to the Players, Organizers, Publishers, or whether they are in the Public Domain.
So far, the Chess Moves have been considered public domain. Meaning anyone can profit off the republishing of those moves in any media. And you owe no one royalties.
I would have a tough time seeing anything different between baseball stats and Chess Moves.
> But MLB recently bought the rights to be the sole licensor
Haha, only in Amnerica.
> 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?
Haha, only in America.
> A sports fantasy league company
Haha, only in Amnerica.
,
Seriously, who the hell cares about Baseball outside of a few backward places near the North American land mass?
- Anonycous Moward
I believe that MLB is in the right here. It is their right to claim copyright on "their" stats. That is the ones collected by their employees. If ESPN makes notes of their own stats, then it should be their copyrighted material. Collecting that data is not a super easy task. Someone does actually have to sit there and enter them in. And with the availability to have live in game stats via the web, it goes a step further into protecting their work.
It is still an interesting question though. How is it "public" domain? You can't go to a game for free. You "can" watch a game via internet game updates. But you can't really watch it free on tv except for those few games on local channels. ESPN pays a boat load of money for the rights to show games. So if someone is making money off of someone elses product, do you allow it?
Take this for example. Say I open a site that completely takes all of slashdot's headlines and I turn it into a subscription service. Aren't I in the wrong? After all, slashdot's own reporting is just links to articles not of their own. (usually) I for one think it would be very wrong to make money off of slashdot's work.
1) Find a couple of companies that were essential to the organization in the past but have long since gone bankrupt.
2) Buy up the rights to those companies' names and trademarks.
3) Tell the MLB they no longer have the right to use them.
Laugh as they now have to ammend their records to "So and so scored X at some stadium we can't mention anymore, as part of a now defunct team we can't mention either, on such and such a date."
I wonder how many cities are pissed at some major league team dumping the venue they built at immense cost to tax payers only for the team to get a better deal elsewhere. Can their mayors revoke the MLB's right to use the name of the city in any of their statistics? Imagine, "The all time record for [whatever] was scored on [date] but we can't tell you where."
Well I tried to patent it, but the application got lost in the mail, someone stole the check and forged a higher amount on it, my computer containing the originals crashed and the backups were no good.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
I used to work for a company that worked on creating the fun yellow line for 1st down in football (and other silly things at on televised sporting events - puck tracker for hockey).
Sports are a closed loop. Everything you hear or see in a sporting event has been paid for. The sports scores on the 10 o clock news are paid for. Going to the game and watching requires a licensed ticket. Newspapers pay a small fee for each score in the sports section. It's been like this sense professional sports began in the US.
It may be silly and seem illegal - but it has been the way sports have worked for as long as their was media to report it (newspaper/tv/radio).
as some earlier posts have indicated, the issue is not whether or not facts are copyrightable, or compilation of facts are copyrightable. it is whether or not identities can be used in the promulgation of these statistics/facts. mlb would not argue your right to publish that the modern-day home run record is 73 and it was set by a san francisco outfielder in 2001. mlb (or mlb players association) would argue whether or not you can use barry bonds's names in conjunction with the statistic, because the use of his name may be tantamount to his "sponsoring" the fact's publication. many non-licensed (read: non-EA) baseball games cannot list the names of players, but must instead resort to fictional names, and rely on fan-sites to link the statistics with the names. keep in mind that in this case, the facts are legal and distributed with the game (at-bats, on base percentage, slugging percentage, hits allowed, walks allowed, etc.). only the player identities are withheld.
:)
http://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?s=faae4d4fd2d9b b9ef51c54c1852d76cd&showtopic=2966
i still think mlb's position is utterly ridiculous, and hope that (a) the case makes it to litigation, and (b) their position will be struck down. however (a) will probably not happen because the plaintiff (a corporate entity bent on producing profits) will probably settle for a reduced fee or (b) the increasingly-conservative court approves mlb's position and goes on to encourage more nightmarish scenarios that other slashdotters have been posting (a la Grokster).
finally, here is the take from a good die-hard baseball fan site, with lots of sabremetric statistically minded fans. red-sox fan affiliation, so yankee fans may want to avert their eyes.
disclaimer: barry bonds has in no way sponsored this post, nor does the use of his name in any way imply his sponsorship of my post getting a "5, Insightful" rating.
Sure it's all "facts" and "statistics" that can't be owned, but...
There wouldn't be any world series statistics or any baseball records for that matter if the MLB association didn't decide "hey, let's start a league and start playing baseball". Because of what the MLB has done, there are now these statistics and facts for people to gather. They would not exist if the MLB was not formed and doing business.
Now, what about these scenarios are different from gathering detailed statistics about a baseball game?
1.) I watched Scrubs on tv last night, it was funny because JD was turning 30 and decided to run a marathon.
2.) I watched Scrubs on tv last night, everything that the actors said went like this....
3.) I watched Scrubs on tv last night, and oh, here are a whole bunch of facts and statistics in MPEG2 form of what the show looked like...
I'm sure scenario #1 is pretty well protected as not breaking any laws, 2 has been debated with song lyric websites, or even creating your own screen plays from watching a show (I wonder if that is against the law?), and 3 it seems is where copyright law really starts to come in affect.
To me, baseball statistics very loosely almost fall into scenario #2. Depending how they're organized they can give a milding exciting view of the game. You can look at the stats and say "oh look, it was the bottom of the nineth, 2 outs bases loaded, and they hit a grand slam! that must have been a good game"
I say that the MLB might very well have a right to these "facts" since they aren't natural facts of the world, but are information about a very private activity called a baseball game that they privately organized. Does the MLB have one of those hilarious disclaimers that the NFL has? "...any recollections or accounts of this game without prior written consent from the NFL is against the law (or something similar)..." I always laugh when I hear it. I guess the MLB could start having us abide by NDA's as a disclaimer in the ticket purchase, or before the broadcast.
So, I think the MLB *may* be entitled to owning these facts. Do I think it's best for everyone involved if they do? I would say probably not... We'll have to see what happens.
Cubs tickets are cake to get if they're below
If they're ABOVE
I am unsure if prices fluctuate, but it runs over $15 for a bleacher seat, IIRC. (I haven't been to a Cubs game since 2002)
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
OR do they call them "truths" to get around the whole, it is impossible to own facts problems. And in this particular case, who cares. The baseball players are nothing more than steroid freaks who would othewise lack talent.
Well then... If MLB wins this suit then all media will have to pay a rights fee to announce the box scores and discuss stats from the previous days game and should have to pay a fee to MLB for this propritary information. If that is the case then I hope that all media ceases covering major league baseball. If fans need to know the scores they'll just have to go to MLB.com every day and we can spend more time covering football during the sports news. Basically FUCK'EM....
There's more than one way to skin a cat, but what do you do with the skin when you're done?
Facts are, generally, not copyrightable (although there are enough people here saying that they might be in the UK, as part of a database, that I'm inclined to think that there are exceptions). In Australia, I was involved (as an employee of a company) in litigation surrounding the copying of a database, and the courts handed down a very specific ruling. The database, and the effort that went into putting it into its current form, was copyrightable, but the information wasn't, and if our company was prepared to inspect the data in its existing form and go to some effort to get it into the form we wanted, we could exploit it without paying royalties.
The court even approved our solution: we printed the entire electronic database (tens of thousands of sheets of that old tractor-feed A3ish sized paper) and hired dozens of typists to re-type it into a new database. It was crazy, but the information in the original was purely factual (no creativity) so couldn't be copyrighted, but the electronic database layout of it was creative, and so we needed to take the raw information and add our own creative spin to it (creating our own database format and re-typing). I suspect that now, ten years on, the courts would recognise that the typists added no creativity, only the database guys and programmers, so based on that old ruling I would imagine an automated dump of the data to our new format would likely be legal.
HOWEVER... This is not the point. In fact, this is SO off-topic that the above two paragraphs, in isolation, deserve modding down as irrelevant.
This issue is about the fact that this fantasy-league crew are exploiting the identities (formed in large part from their statistics) of baseball players without the correct licence. That would be, in some ways, like me making a CG movie with somebody who looked like Mel Gibson, sounded like Mel Gibson, acted like Mel Gibson, was even called "Mel Gibson" in the credits, but had no approval from Mel Gibson himself. That would be obviously wrong (I believe that there are provisions in copyright law that amount to a person "owning the copyright to a detailed picture of who they are", to a certain degree, particularly when it comes to commercial exploitation). So the legal position is likely to be that "nobody owns the statistics, but those statistics combined with a player profile (even if it only consists of a name) is sufficient to potentially be copyrightable because it is a detailed picture of who that person is (in some respect)".
Then it is likely to get back to things like how much of that right was signed over by the players under their contracts. Copyright is separated (roughly, IANAL) into standard copyright (which would be mostly signed away, in this case) and creater's rights (which are NOT EVER transferrable), and so Major League Baseball will (probably) have to make a case that sufficient rights to the identities of the players were signed over under their contracts, and validly so (in a way not prevented by "creater's rights"), for MLB to retain sufficient rights to what would probably be claimable by the individual players had they not signed some of those rights over as part of their player contracts.
This is basically a less extreme version of my Mel Gibson example, and I think both sides have a good case. Personally, if I were in charge of MLB, I'd be saying to myself "Hey, they were paying us 9% of gross! This industry is big business, and everyone currently assumes they need to give us a cut, just for owning this licensing agreement, which we need for our core business anyway! Which idiot stirred this ant nest? FIRED!"
Of course, there's the other possibility, where they want to prevent competition by this fantasy league group and create their own, protected, fantasy league. As a matter of fact, my cynical mind is telling me that this is probably what's going on. Someone's nephew, fresh out of IT college, has mastered enough ASP to write a fantasy league program, and BAM! They're trying to kill off the competition, one injunction at a time.
Kerry Wood tied the strikeout record BEFORE his surgery, smartass. Nice try, and "way to go" to all you ignorami that modded his ignorance as "informative".
There is a concept in copyright law called the idea/expression dichotomy.
Basically it says that ideas cannot be copyrighted, but the expression of those ideas can be. So like you said, the plot can not be copyrighted but the way it is written, the way it is told, the expression of it can be.
A map cannot be copyrighted, but the layout and symbols of it can. A phone directory cannot be copyrighted, but the layout, typesetting of it can. With a phone book it lists entries in alphabetical order which is in the opinion of common law (here in the US anyway) not enough to warrant the minimum threashold of "minimal degree of creativity" to allow for a copyright.
Copyright is all about creativity and the expression of the facts, not the facts themselves.
And yes I've had a few copyright law courses in college...
Libertas in infinitum
"As I see it, if MLB can own the copyright on the video of the game, then they can own the copyright on what happened during the game. The two are one and the same."
Except that they are not one in the same. Its the same thing as being able to own the copyright to a specific movie version of Hamlet, versus owning the copyright to the script.
In this case the script, data, is inherently not copyrightable. I could read the phone book on TV and retain the copyright to the video. Doesn't give me a copyright to the phone book, though.
I was going to post something.... but I'm waiting to sell what I was going to say to one of you guys... any takers?
come on...
I highly recommend that you consider that any event in history is in the public domain. Remember those sci fi stories where the japanese ended up owning Mount Vernon? Or the Jefferson Memorial? Do you feel comfortable knowing that something that happened 70 years ago just isn't yours? That someone is allowing claim to be laid over something so simple as the statistic of Bucky Dent hitting a home run? Or the stats surrounding the Red Sox's 2005 World Series? Those stats aren't yours says baseball, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Personally I say the stats aren't theirs. They freely give those stats away and have for years. Those stats are recorded and reported by fans who watched it, recorded it and in turn gave those scores to newspapers, books and many many other formats for you to enjoy. The public owns these stats. Because someone played the game, because someone provided the stadium and the equipment, because someone provided the dirt on which the game was played does not mean the own the resulting statistics.
If we allow this, we allow someone to own 2+2. And if so, I personally here and now copyright the number five, and baseball can't use it unless they give us the stats and the history that WE own. I seem to remember reading something about the baseball hall of fame, which clearly stated that the game is for the enjoyment of all the fans and the history is ours and ours alone.
Since I last checked, nobody owns history but the public. It's offensive to a sport I love and want to share with my family that you think you own a statistic that's burned into my memory, that is as much of my identity as the baseball cap I wear on my head from time to time or the blue of my eyes.
It's an insult to my grandfather who once saw Grover Cleveland Alexander, and my great-grandfather who saw Cy Young pitch.
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
So you mean they will SELL me a scorecard at the ballpark (and give me that nice free little stubby pencil!) so that I can record all the minute statistics of the game, but then I can't actually tell anyone about what I wrote down myself!?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
This was a joke about the MLB taking statistics that are everywhere (including peoples brains) and making them property.
If you dont get the joke, you don't deserve to mod it down.