Copyright and MLB Stats
by KevinJanuary 19th, 2006
I cannot find a web story about this, so some of these details may be incorrect. But on Tuesday, I heard Keith Olbermann talking about MLB suing some stats provider. MLBs claim was apparently that the stats and statistical profiles of major league players were the property of MLB and the players association. They were arguing not that a particular record of the stats was protected under the country’s IP laws, but that all stats everywhere were.
That strikes me as insane. MLB is arguing that they own the statistics to all baseball games, no matter who records them or in what format they are recorded. Your scorecards form the game, the USA Today box scores, and the ESPN scroll all belong to MBL under this line of reasoning. I sincerely hope that I am either misunderstanding their argument or that this will get laughed out of court.
The fact that it got this far, however, is another black mark against our intellectual property laws. In our intellectual property regime, it is possible to patent a gene or a mathematical formula and MLB is arguing that it is possible to copyright not a particular recording of a historical event but the actual event itself. How did we get to the point where this kind of nonsense is actually advanced by a reputable law firm?
Categories: Legal Issues, MLB/MiLB, Sports |
I couldn’t find the Olbermann quip, but I did find some general articles here [LA Times - Jan 03, 2006], here [CNN - Jan 15, 2006], and here [Chicago Tribune - Jan 16, 2006].
I agree with you regarding IP. Statistics are a very important component of MLB, but they cannot be considered property any more than tracking the statistics of how many episodes of ‘24′ are shown each year on FOX or tracking how many times Jack Bauer shoots someone on the show.
[...] From Kevin of Lean Left: On Tuesday, I heard Keith Olbermann talking about MLB suing some stats provider. MLBs claim was apparently that the stats and statistical profiles of major league players were the property of MLB and the players association. They were arguing not that a particular record of the stats was protected under the country’s IP laws, but that all stats everywhere were. [...]
I don’t know the details, but I think it does have to do with the publishing venue. The actual numbers are not protected - independent agencies can and do collect statistics on ball games. But those statistics have to be published somewhere, and - unless you have personally attended every game you write about and collected the data yourself - when you use data that have been published in someone else’s book, for other than personal use, you are infringing their copyright.
MLB and the data agencies have gone round and round on this in the past. Sports stats are a huge business, and they’re all very jealous of their products. Any quasi-commercial use of someone else’s data - like for your fantasy baseball league - will get you sued. And yes, the data are technically the same for everyone, but the source cannot be used without permission (and a licensing fee). If they can prove you took your numbers from their book, they’ll get you. (They prove it with tricks like deliberately inserting small errors and then watching to see if they show up in other people’s stats lists.)
The whole story of baseball stats collecting is fascinatingly geeky and very complicated. There’s a good book on it: The Numbers Game - it details the history and the competition between different stats agencies to compile the most accurate and complete stats (at one point MLB gave up and hired an outside agency as its official stats source because its own records weren’t as good), as well as complex arguments about the most revealing stats (batting average is universally despised as useless), and the rise of “moneyball-style” statistical management. A good read.
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