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?"
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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Bear in mind statistics are one of the most important components in baseball. More so than any other sport.
Not going to weigh in either way here, but thought that was worth bringing up.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
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
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?
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 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
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
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.
But this isn't about baseball, this is about precedent. I really don't care about baseball, either, but I do care about what this means.
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.
>Bear in mind statistics are one of the most important components in
>baseball.
So? It is still just facts. Weather statistics, like the temperature and wether the sun is shining or not is one of the most important components for anyone in meteorology, still doesn't mean no one else can tell about the weather yesterday they read about or saw.
Bullshit
1) Do they show a screen of statistics and graphs with an inset of the actual game in the bottom right corner on TV? Why does anyone go to a baseball field when they could more comfortably access all the statistics at home?
2) You obviously haven't heard of cricket.
The way i see it, this is recorded history being liscensed out to people.
If i watched the game on tv and printed the stats from it, there is no way i'd ever be convinced i'd have to pay royalties on such information. it's like asking for royalties from me if i were to publish a summary of a book i read.
MABASPLOOM!
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.
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!
"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
Owning constants is hard work. You gotta get out there and protect your property. Do you have any idea how much it cost to dig up that Newton guy to have him summonsed?
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.
>Yeah, but you didn't buy a ticket from the corporation organizing the
;-)
>wonder of weather to see it, did you?
Again, so what? You don't have to see something to be able to tell about it. I can tell about a score in a game even if I did not see it just as I can tell the temperature in some city even if I was not there to see or experience it myself.
>Be sure the check the EULA next time you go see a game of baseball! I'll
>bet it says "You are granted a non-exclusive license to enjoy the game
>yadda yadda but the ownership and rights to the results remain the sole
>property of blah blah blaa."
If we disregard that I don't go and see baseball since baseball is basically not played in my country, the point is that there is no such thing as "right to results". It is just plain facts and can't be owned of have any rights any more than you can own the right to the temperature of some place. There is no such "rights". Doesn't matter iof someone claims it. You can claim the right to the temperature in your garden all you want, that doesn't mean no one else can tell about it.
A bad ruling on this could create precedents that affect you whether you badly. e.g. What are you going to do when you want to publish software bug statistics?
Something like this needs to be fought at every stage.
That's a problem with the law. The stroke of a pen can restrict the freedoms of millions of people.
---
Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.
It's more like sending C&D notices to force small fry to cough up the cash.
Linky
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
[1] rather you should.
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You could argue that, but you'd be wrong. The outcome is not protected by copyright anymore than the basic plot outline of a novel is protected by copyright. Its perfectly legal to tell someone that The Lord of the Rings is about a fight between good and evil, and that good wins in the end. Oh, and there's wizards. Facts about a copyrighted work are not part of the copyrighted work itself, even if the author/artist/etc. created those facts.
Actually, this might not be a bad idea.
Although I'm not sure where the statistics in question are actually coming from, let's assume that they're from MLB analysts.
If they want to copyright their statistics, fine; I don't think they could stop me from going to a game, taking notes on how many pitches/balls/strikes/etc. there were, and then posting that information on a web site. Suppose a whole lot of people did that, and you would have a separate, uncopyrighted repository of statistics, independent of the MLB ones. I'm not sure how accurate they would be, but I can't see how they could stop you from doing this. I think any attempt to block you would be a pretty clear First Amendment issue.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
IANAL, but there is nothing (unless you agreed to some sort of implied contract when you bought the ticket, but that's another issue...) to stop you going to the game, and keeping track of the statistics. In that sense, surely the information itself is public domain. The compiled information provided by anyone who has actually done that is a different matter, however.
If I make maps, (for example), I don't claim copyright to the landscape, but I do require payment (and can claim copyright) for the time and effort I put into measuring it and making up the maps. By the same argument, anyone who actually compiles and publishes statistics should have ownership of the data it has taken them time and effort to gather, and should be able to charge for them. If you don't like it, then there is nothing to stop you compiling the data yourself from an original source.
On a related note, I understand that companies that do this kind of thing often incorporate minor, deliberate errors into the data so that they can identify copying. This could be a dummy entry on each page of the 'phone book, or a slight kink in a minor road on a map, that does not affect the usefulness of the data, but clearly identifies the origin. It can't be easily identified by an outside party either.
Chuck
- These are small, *those* are _far away_
The current concept of "copyright" dates to the printing press.
But the idea that copyright is a property right and that copyright violation is theft is relatively recent.
Economists talk about the positive and negative externalities of economic behaviour. An "externality" is a consequence of an action that is not borne by the person taking the action. Positive externalities are good things that acrue to others through my actions that I do not get paid for. Negative externalities are bad things that happen to others because of my actions that they do not get compensated for.
Property rights are a human invention to minimize negative externalities. If I own property I can prevent others from using it to dump their waste, or from farming it and leaving me with the cost of maintaining it, etc. My property right protects my exclusive use of my property from the negative externalities that others may put upon it. At the same time, they prevent me from putting negative externalities on others.
Copyright is a human invention to protect positive externalities. As someone else has pointed out in a quote from Einstein, if I give you a new idea, you have the idea and I still have it. I have created a benefit for you without significant cost to myself. Copyright is a way of trying to protect in law the benefit I have given you, so that I may capture that positive externality in the form of some kind of payment.
Copyright and property rights are therefore different in kind. Copyright is licenseable (and sub-licensable if the license is written that way) but should not be salable as property. The GPL, for example, treats copyright this way.
Every absurd move in "intellectual property" law in the past couple of decades is fundamentally linked to the notion of ideas of any kind as "property". Once you have granted that notion, any number of insane things follow, including the notion that facts can be property.
The fundamental intellectual fight is to get rid of the idea of "intellectual property", and to explain when it comes up why it is an absurd idea with no historical basis, and an abuse of the term "property" as a false metaphor for what should be a licensing/sub-licensing relationship dealing with a temporary monopoly right that is artificially created to reward the creators of certain types of work to the general benefit of society.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
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.
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!
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.
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)