gerloff
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Montag, 16.Januar 2006
Another rights hoarder is about to shoot itself in the foot. As CNN
reports, a company that compiles baseball statistics on the internet
for sports fans who can then pretend to run their own teams, is up
against Major League Baseball, who say that these statistics are their
"intellectual property".
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.
Baseball being "pastime of an estimated 16 million people", is is
probably a good idea to exclude your "consumers" from doing anything
with the data your "product" generates. It will hugely help baseball's
popularity (not that I care, since I know of no sport that is more
boring to me, except maybe chess.)
But at issue is really something else:
CBC Distribution and Marketing wants the judge to stop Major League
Baseball from requiring a license to use the statistics.
The company says baseball statistics become historical facts as soon as
the game is over, so it shouldn't have to pay for the right to use
them.
Strange thing that no licence is required so far to publish the results
of the game.
Today's weather is brought to you Copyright of Weather.com. Don't forget to pay the
licence fee if you start a business chat with a "Fine weather today,
isn't it?" as that would be commercial use.
