4 ms·

IANAL, but it has been ruled that NFL player names and statistics are protected by the First Amendment, i.e. no one "owns" it and anyone is free to use it for a

IANAL, but it has been ruled that NFL player names and statistics are protected by the First Amendment, i.e. no one "owns" it and anyone is free to use it for any purpose. http://blogs.trb.com/sports/custom/business/blog/2009/04/cbssportscom_wins_fantasy_game.html http://blogs.trb.com/sports/custom/business/blog/2009/04/cbs... However, you do have to get the data, and unauthorized access of computers (which constitutes trespassing) can be a legal gray area. I'd love to hear a lawyer weigh in on the legality of scraping the data directly from espn.com.

pseut 14y ago
Last time I checked, the play by play data on espn.com was pretty error-ridden. This was three or so years ago, so it might have changed, and I was hypothetically interested in the score columns, so it may not matter depending on other hypothetical uses. But I'd hypothetically avoid scraping ESPN for that reason alone.