4 ms·

I'm curious if this data is actually public domain. Where are they sourcing it from? Are they legally allowed to redistribute? Etc.

bronson 12y ago
Why wouldn't they? It's just raw facts, presented in their own minimal style.
- buro9 12y ago
  In the UK this rule applies: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-otherprotect/c-databaseright.htm http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-otherprotect/c-databaseri... For copyright protection to apply, the database must have originality in the selection or arrangement of the contents and for database right to apply, there must have been a substantial investment in obtaining, verifying or presenting its contents. It is possible that a database will satisfy both these requirements so that both copyright and database right apply. They would have a "database right" if they had placed a person at each match to gather the data and verify it, as that is a substantial investment. How they originally acquired the data is important and shouldn't be presumed. However that doesn't stop you from implementing your own database and re-acquiring the facts in some trivial way. Just bear in mind that accessing historical data may breach someone else's database right. Database rights are usually proven by fake data inserted into the database to catch people copying it. For example you could argue that the Rare Record Price Guide ( http://www.rarerecordpriceguide.com/ http://www.rarerecordpriceguide.com/ ) is just a collection of facts, and decide to copy it... but you'll discover when sued, that a few of the bands in the guide are fictional and designed to demonstrate that the database is theirs, and that it's not trivial to acquire and verify the data.
  - bronson 12y ago
    Great replies joosters and buro9. Thanks. So, for the sake of argument, if the dataset had no fake data then it would be OK? Or would they still need to demonstrate "substantial investment", no matter the state of the data? If the latter, then that gets weird quick. How many lines of code is considered substantial? How many hours hunched over a microfiche machine? It sounds like it would ultimately depend on the skill of your lawyer.
    - ugexe 12y ago
      You need to think of fake data being a more broad term than you are. If we talk about play by play for american college football you will notice how ncaa.com, espn.com, foxsports.com and others have slight differences in what a play's down/togo/time/etc is. It is not as simple as ESPN inserting an entire fake team or fake game; if you were to compare to the last example it would be a real record with a slightly modified price. I analyze college football data sets and can determine where they came from, so I have no doubt that companies can as well. If you have enough data sources you could theoretically recreate a play by play from all of them and have a data set that would be difficult to prove was stolen from someplace in particular. I say theoretically because (at least with college football) you are often not given enough information to recreate the game (simple example would be how long a play took to execute to determine drive possession time), so often you are left using a best guess method.
    - buro9 12y ago
      I think you miss the point. If you have to start arguing what is and isn't a substantial effort then you're probably going to fall foul. This is an open source schema for storing data, why not re-acquire the data from a fresh source and make that open source too? This avoids pulling it from an existing and potentially protected source. You could have members of the public individually enter historical scores, and each one provide proof of the score (e.g. a photo of a result in a newspaper or a photo of the matchday guide). You could verify correctness of that acquired data by comparing to a few known data sources (even if they were protected). So long as you were close enough in fact to not alter history it was probably right, and correctable in the future (editable like a wiki). If you use one of the existing datasources you'll find yourself with a lawsuit if you reach any reasonable size.
- joosters 12y ago
  There was a court case regarding "database rights" for horse racing data in the UK, where the British Horseracing Board sued William Hill (a bookmaker) and lost the case. The BHB basically wanted to charge for the right to publish the horse racing fields (i.e. details of each race, the runners, etc). Details of the case law here: http://www.out-law.com/page-392 http://www.out-law.com/page-392 And of the court case: http://www.out-law.com/page-5055 http://www.out-law.com/page-5055 The lawsuit backfired completely. The BHB had wanted to charge newspapers for publishing horse racing fixtures, but it inspired the newspapers to turn around and question why the BHB wasn't paying them for devoting pages to the sport. (Looks like the case also involved football fixtures as well)
- notahacker 12y ago
  An entity called Football Dataco representing the English and Scottish professional leagues', claimed these leagues' fixture lists and results fell within the scope of their IP even if sourced independently, and they successfully extracted large licensing fees from bookmakers and publishers whilst sending everyone else c&d letters. There's been quite a bit of legal back and forth - http://www.football-dataco.com/ http://www.football-dataco.com/ - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17218968 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17218968 - http://www.twobirds.com/en/news/articles/2012/football-dataco-ltd-v-stan-james-plc-sportradar-gmbh0213 http://www.twobirds.com/en/news/articles/2012/football-datac...
  - UVB-76 12y ago
    Historically, Football DataCo claimed rights to football fixtures in the UK, on grounds of copyright and sui generis database rights, and extracted licensing fees from those wishing to publish them. That practice ended with the March 2012 ruling in the European Court of Justice [1] that neither rights subsist in relation to fixture lists. However, in a separate ruling [2] Football DataCo successfully argued they did have a database right over live data concerning matches (e.g. goals, goalscores, cards, etc.) [1] http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=119904&doclang=en http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=119... [2] http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2012/1185.html http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2012/1185.html
    - oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
      I was on the receiving end of a DataCo C&D and had to stop my quite-popular, burgeoning 'prediction game' site - was a huge shame. When you say "goals" in relation to [2], does that mean results cannot be published, or does that only relate to specific times of goals?
      - Firepyre 12y ago
        Great question. I've long had an idea for a fantasy football type game and shied away from using premiership football results because of this ruling. However thanks to the links UVB-76 provided I've now spent a bit of time going through the details and I'm confident that simple goal and timing data do not fall under this simply because it does not meet the 'substantial' requirement, as made clear in paragraph 76 . It seems uk.practicallaw.com has a great comment on the finding, also supporting this argument.
MisterBastahrd 12y ago
Yeah, me too. The official statistics of sports leagues are rarely ever in the public domain. Official being the key word here.

bronson 12y ago

Why wouldn't they? It's just raw facts, presented in their own minimal style.

buro9 12y ago
In the UK this rule applies: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-otherprotect/c-databaseright.htm http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-otherprotect/c-databaseri... For copyright protection to apply, the database must have originality in the selection or arrangement of the contents and for database right to apply, there must have been a substantial investment in obtaining, verifying or presenting its contents. It is possible that a database will satisfy both these requirements so that both copyright and database right apply. They would have a "database right" if they had placed a person at each match to gather the data and verify it, as that is a substantial investment. How they originally acquired the data is important and shouldn't be presumed. However that doesn't stop you from implementing your own database and re-acquiring the facts in some trivial way. Just bear in mind that accessing historical data may breach someone else's database right. Database rights are usually proven by fake data inserted into the database to catch people copying it. For example you could argue that the Rare Record Price Guide ( http://www.rarerecordpriceguide.com/ http://www.rarerecordpriceguide.com/ ) is just a collection of facts, and decide to copy it... but you'll discover when sued, that a few of the bands in the guide are fictional and designed to demonstrate that the database is theirs, and that it's not trivial to acquire and verify the data.
- bronson 12y ago
  Great replies joosters and buro9. Thanks. So, for the sake of argument, if the dataset had no fake data then it would be OK? Or would they still need to demonstrate "substantial investment", no matter the state of the data? If the latter, then that gets weird quick. How many lines of code is considered substantial? How many hours hunched over a microfiche machine? It sounds like it would ultimately depend on the skill of your lawyer.
  - ugexe 12y ago
    You need to think of fake data being a more broad term than you are. If we talk about play by play for american college football you will notice how ncaa.com, espn.com, foxsports.com and others have slight differences in what a play's down/togo/time/etc is. It is not as simple as ESPN inserting an entire fake team or fake game; if you were to compare to the last example it would be a real record with a slightly modified price. I analyze college football data sets and can determine where they came from, so I have no doubt that companies can as well. If you have enough data sources you could theoretically recreate a play by play from all of them and have a data set that would be difficult to prove was stolen from someplace in particular. I say theoretically because (at least with college football) you are often not given enough information to recreate the game (simple example would be how long a play took to execute to determine drive possession time), so often you are left using a best guess method.
  - buro9 12y ago
    I think you miss the point. If you have to start arguing what is and isn't a substantial effort then you're probably going to fall foul. This is an open source schema for storing data, why not re-acquire the data from a fresh source and make that open source too? This avoids pulling it from an existing and potentially protected source. You could have members of the public individually enter historical scores, and each one provide proof of the score (e.g. a photo of a result in a newspaper or a photo of the matchday guide). You could verify correctness of that acquired data by comparing to a few known data sources (even if they were protected). So long as you were close enough in fact to not alter history it was probably right, and correctable in the future (editable like a wiki). If you use one of the existing datasources you'll find yourself with a lawsuit if you reach any reasonable size.
joosters 12y ago
There was a court case regarding "database rights" for horse racing data in the UK, where the British Horseracing Board sued William Hill (a bookmaker) and lost the case. The BHB basically wanted to charge for the right to publish the horse racing fields (i.e. details of each race, the runners, etc). Details of the case law here: http://www.out-law.com/page-392 http://www.out-law.com/page-392 And of the court case: http://www.out-law.com/page-5055 http://www.out-law.com/page-5055 The lawsuit backfired completely. The BHB had wanted to charge newspapers for publishing horse racing fixtures, but it inspired the newspapers to turn around and question why the BHB wasn't paying them for devoting pages to the sport. (Looks like the case also involved football fixtures as well)
notahacker 12y ago
An entity called Football Dataco representing the English and Scottish professional leagues', claimed these leagues' fixture lists and results fell within the scope of their IP even if sourced independently, and they successfully extracted large licensing fees from bookmakers and publishers whilst sending everyone else c&d letters. There's been quite a bit of legal back and forth - http://www.football-dataco.com/ http://www.football-dataco.com/ - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17218968 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17218968 - http://www.twobirds.com/en/news/articles/2012/football-dataco-ltd-v-stan-james-plc-sportradar-gmbh0213 http://www.twobirds.com/en/news/articles/2012/football-datac...
- UVB-76 12y ago
  Historically, Football DataCo claimed rights to football fixtures in the UK, on grounds of copyright and sui generis database rights, and extracted licensing fees from those wishing to publish them. That practice ended with the March 2012 ruling in the European Court of Justice [1] that neither rights subsist in relation to fixture lists. However, in a separate ruling [2] Football DataCo successfully argued they did have a database right over live data concerning matches (e.g. goals, goalscores, cards, etc.) [1] http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=119904&doclang=en http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=119... [2] http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2012/1185.html http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2012/1185.html
  - oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
    I was on the receiving end of a DataCo C&D and had to stop my quite-popular, burgeoning 'prediction game' site - was a huge shame. When you say "goals" in relation to [2], does that mean results cannot be published, or does that only relate to specific times of goals?
    - Firepyre 12y ago
      Great question. I've long had an idea for a fantasy football type game and shied away from using premiership football results because of this ruling. However thanks to the links UVB-76 provided I've now spent a bit of time going through the details and I'm confident that simple goal and timing data do not fall under this simply because it does not meet the 'substantial' requirement, as made clear in paragraph 76 . It seems uk.practicallaw.com has a great comment on the finding, also supporting this argument.

MisterBastahrd 12y ago

Yeah, me too. The official statistics of sports leagues are rarely ever in the public domain. Official being the key word here.