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> NBA game data is not subject to copyright That is pretty fascinating. In horse racing (where paying for past performance information has been standard operat

by eric_h 8y ago

> NBA game data is not subject to copyright That is pretty fascinating. In horse racing (where paying for past performance information has been standard operating procedure for more than a century), there is (at least in the US) exactly one company that holds and brokers that information, and it is quite a profitable business. It's interesting that they theoretically can't claim copyright to protect that business.

SimonPStevens 8y ago
This sounds like it would be a similar situation to that of maps. The fact of what physical geography exists cannot be copyrighted. Anyone is free to produce their own map by measuring the physical world. In theory if everyone used accurate measurements, then all maps would be identical. However a map itself can be copyrighted, and producing your own map by copying another for which you don't have permission is illegal. But how would anyone ever know whether you went out and measured the real world, or just copied someone's map because the underlying data is the same. Historical horse racing data is the same. You could start gathering all the data by recording the outcome of races, and in 10 years you would have 10 years of historical data. Or you could just pretend you have already done that and actually just copy the data from the other company. The result would be indistinguishable. 'Trap steets' is one way the mapping industry deals with this problem - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street - So I would not be surprised to find some deliberate mistakes in the past performance data provided by this company, which should they be found in your data set, would be pretty conclusive evidence of the source of your data. "What colour are your bits" is also relevant and interesting article - http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 - Despite what techies would like to believe, the source of your data does matter, even if multiple different sources would actually result in an identical block of data.

by eric_h 8y ago

SimonPStevens 8y ago

This sounds like it would be a similar situation to that of maps. The fact of what physical geography exists cannot be copyrighted. Anyone is free to produce their own map by measuring the physical world. In theory if everyone used accurate measurements, then all maps would be identical. However a map itself can be copyrighted, and producing your own map by copying another for which you don't have permission is illegal. But how would anyone ever know whether you went out and measured the real world, or just copied someone's map because the underlying data is the same. Historical horse racing data is the same. You could start gathering all the data by recording the outcome of races, and in 10 years you would have 10 years of historical data. Or you could just pretend you have already done that and actually just copy the data from the other company. The result would be indistinguishable. 'Trap steets' is one way the mapping industry deals with this problem - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street - So I would not be surprised to find some deliberate mistakes in the past performance data provided by this company, which should they be found in your data set, would be pretty conclusive evidence of the source of your data. "What colour are your bits" is also relevant and interesting article - http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 - Despite what techies would like to believe, the source of your data does matter, even if multiple different sources would actually result in an identical block of data.