Who Owns Baseball Statistics?

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

Facts?

[EEBaum (520514)]

What, we can own facts now?

Somehow I'm not at all surprised.

Re:Facts?

[Feanturi (99866)]

Somehow I'm not at all surprised.

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

Re:Facts?

[jeeperscats (882744)]

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

Re:Facts?

[terrymr (316118)]

That would be silly.

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

Ooooooh

[AoT (107216)]

I got dibs on planck's constant!

That's nothing!

[jd (1658)]

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

Re:That's nothing!

[SamSim (630795)]

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

Re:Ooooooh

[AuMatar (183847)]

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

Re:Ooooooh

[dabigpaybackski (772131)]

I probably get Heisenburg's Uncertainly Principle!

Re:Facts?

[by Anonymous Coward]

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

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

A Einstein

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

Charles Babbage

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

Rights in databases, not in facts

[john-da-luthrun (876866)]

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

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

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

Re:Facts?

[galgon (675813)]

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

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

Re:Facts?

[dominator (61418)]

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

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

Re:Facts vs. Database

[dominator (61418)]

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

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

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

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

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

Re:Facts?

[Pofy (471469)]

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

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

Re:Football Facts?

[by Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Facts?

[chuckT (12278)]

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

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

[fantomas (94850)]

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

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

Re:Facts?

[Shano (179535)]

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

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

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

Re:Compilations of facts

[cameldrv (53081)]

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

Re:Facts?

[harmonica (29841)]

Ask your GrandGrandGrandGrandGrandGrandMa

Which one? I have 64 of those.

Stupid.

[NilObject (522433)]

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

Crazy me

[AoT (107216)]

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

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

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

Not the weirdest

[www.sorehands.com (142825)]

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

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

What the Slashdot community thinks

[dorkygeek (898295)]

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

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

Re:What the Slashdot community thinks

[NitsujTPU (19263)]

No, he's serious.

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

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

Poll

[britneys 9th husband (741556)]

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.

That's stupid

[Rosco P. Coltrane (209368)]

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

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

Re:Not so off-the-wall

[GMontag451 (230904)]

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

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

Gross Nine Cents Per?

[EEBaum (520514)]

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

That's just not cricket

[Aussie (10167)]

Sorry.

That's ridiculous!

[AxemRed (755470)]

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

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

Re:That's ridiculous!

[Sancho (17056)]

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

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

Phonebook?

[omega_cubed (219519)]

They've gotta be kidding!

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

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

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

Oh, this is a FANTASTIC idea!

[One Blue Ninja (801126)]

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

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

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

It's about the identities of the players

[BadAnalogyGuy (945258)]

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

Re:It's about the identities of the players

[J0nne (924579)]

by BadAnalogyGuy (945258)

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

Complicity

[Flying pig (925874)]

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

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

here's one they can keep

[pintomp3 (882811)]

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.

You can't copyright raw information

[crankyspice (63953)]

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

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

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

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

Re:You can't copyright raw information

[ObsessiveMathsFreak (773371)]

Sir,

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

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

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

Yours,

MLB Inc.

Thought For The Day: 'Greed Is Good.'

Copyright of Non-Creative Works?

[CodeBuster (516420)]

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.

So, are the stats made up numbers?

[Jamesday (794888)]

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... :)

Facts versus ideas

[Antony-Kyre (807195)]

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.

Glen Phillips Quotalicious

[bmo (77928)]

"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

Re:On the Subject of Baseball

[civilizedINTENSITY (45686)]

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

Re:On the Subject of Baseball

[Al Dimond (792444)]

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

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

Re:On the Subject of Baseball

[NitsujTPU (19263)]

There's the flip side.

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

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

Re:On the Subject of Baseball

[beders (245558)]

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

Welcome to England

Re:On the Subject of Baseball

[Shimbo (100005)]

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