I would like peoples views on this copyright situation.

I would like to have some football tables on my site - ie standard football tables of results and positions etc.

Now, I would also like these to be remotely updated, so I'm not constantly plugging the stuff in by hand.

I can do this by remotely fetching updated 'football table' information from another site, every few hours or so.

While I understand that copying an exact replica table into my site via a remote fetch would break rules of copyright, would I also be breaking rules of copyright if the table was completely altered to fit my design, and looked nothing like the original table??

In effect I would therefore only be copying the 'results' which surely can't be copyrighted, as you have hundreds of sites all with the same 'raw data' in different formats.

If therefore I'm just 'copying the results' how can I be breaking copyright? If you think I am breaking copyright by using a web fetching method, what is the difference between doing it that way and by just doing it by hand?

Personally I can't see the difference, therefore I would have thought I am not breaking copyright by doing a web fetch for this data.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

It sounds like the information you are interested in is not covered by copyrights. You should familiarize yourself with what is and is not covered. See the US Copyright Office site at http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/ I;ve included an excerpt from their site to help you.

WHAT IS NOT PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT?
Several categories of material are generally not eligible for federal copyright protection. These include among others:

Works that have not been fixed in a tangible form of expression (for example, choreographic works that have not been notated or recorded, or improvisational speeches or performances that have not been written or recorded)

Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; mere listings of ingredients or contents

Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries, or devices, as distinguished from a description, explanation, or illustration

Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship (for example: standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken from public documents or other common sources)

I think that from what this says I'm ok (Although I'm UK based, so laws my vary slightly).

I know its a totally grey area, made even greyer by the internet.

The 'short phrases' sounds interesting. Although this again is a totally wooley term, do you think it indicates that short sentences, or excerts from sentences could be copied?

Eg say the first 15 words from a sentence? Totally grey I admit, but that is what it seems to be implying.

Duster's point of the data coming from public sources is a valid one. Besides, the data from the remote site table would have been gathered from (at some point) the NFL (assuming that's the football league you're referring to) and they provide the statistics to whoever wants them (newspapers, etc.) free of charge. Basically, copyright laws are designed to protect original ideas and thoughts that may or may not be derived from statistical raw data (e.g. the software used to create this bulletin board).

Keep in mind the other site might not be too hapy with someone tapping their bandwidth to load their own site.

Public data is one thing but just because it's public doesn't mean the other site will allow you to take it from them for re-distribution.

I don't see it as a very gray area at all, not even on the Internet. If you take the time to read all the applicable information, you may see that what is covered is quite clear.

Do be careful how you obtain the information. Direct linking to images and portions of pages is stealing unless you have explicit permission. You steal someone's bandwidth, something that is generally paid for.

Copying that information (not covered by copyrights) from another site would be the honorable and legal way to do it. It also doesn't hurt to ask.

Know what you me Duster.

If I did it I would make sure I only "fetched when needed" and only "read" page upto where the info was contained, therefore taking minimal BW. I'd never hotlink pics from another site either - unless the host allowed it (Affiliates - all part of my master plan heehee!!)

The facts may not be copyrighted, but you have to get them from somewhere (unless you have your own agent at each match) and you're then bound by the terms that source imposes. Virtually any site with this sort of data would have a "terms of use" somewhere on the site.

Take for example ESPN's Soccernet. They state, amongst other things:

No material from this site or any Internet site owned, operated, licensed, or controlled by us or our affiliates may be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted, or distributed in any way, except that you may download one copy of the materials on any single computer for your personal, non-commercial home use only ...

Pretty clear really. You can't get the facts from them, especially not for commercial purposes (in fact, you can't even read it when at work, from those conditions!).

So, do ensure the terms of use of the site allow the redistribution of content. Most won't.

Rob

P.S. Note my quote above also violates their terms and conditions...

Things like scores are not protected material. Nothing ESPN can say would change that fact. If someone used them as an indirect source of scores, there is nothing they could do about it.

There's no problem getting your data from free sources such as your own http://www.ljx.com/practice/intellectualproperty/0131nbastat.html) but getting it from other sources you must respect their conditions (otherwise, look for a source that does not have the conditions).

Regardless of copyright, any site may impose any conditions on access they wish (for example, they may insist on your birthday being in May, or your middle initial being X.). If you don't agree with the terms, simply go elsewhere for your data.

So, for a soccer site, get data from another site that allows copying in their terms. If you can't, theft of data is still theft, whether you might think you can get away with it or not.

Rob

In other words, many news related organizations do pay for the information they report on. They may subscibe to a news feed service which provides them the raw data, stories, etc.

I would look into low cost/free content providers. Some offer things like scores for free, and this might be a better way of going about it.

Exactly. News normally isn't free, but you might get some for almost no money from sources such as http://www.moreover.com/cgi-local/page?o=portal&c=Sports%320soccer%20news. There's free news there if you look for it, no need to steal.

With any source, respect the rights of the source you get the data from (otherwise, how could you complain if somebody rips your site off verbatim?).

Rob

The conventional wisdom is: "You can't copyright a list."

(Ma Bell tried to copyright phone books and charge for them many years ago; whence came the decision.)

Although I'd certainly vie strongly with the source site against ripping their material directly, the basic scores themselves would hardly be copyrightable.

Chicken, rhoare, and others raise a good point regarding terms of service. Ebay won a recent case involving "auction harvesting" (i.e., aggeregating auctions from different providers) on a theory of trespass, of all things. If you don't mind having your visitors follow links from your site for info, you can probably find good sports sources at http://isyndicate.com or http://moreover.com.

Hey, welcome aboard, Jonathan. We could surely use a word or two from a real lawyer in here from time to time.

Thanks for the welcome, Mr./Ms. Lux. I try to keep my comments focused, lest somebody accuse me of practicing law on the Internet, rather than practicing Internet law!

-- Jon

Not to worry, Jonathan.

I am in charge of disrupting the focus of the WHT forum threads, so you won't need to do so.

Trust me. This onerous duty is in good hands. Ask anyone.

Originally posted by etLux

Although I'd certainly vie strongly with the source site against ripping their material directly, the basic scores themselves would hardly be copyrightable.


But how do you GET those scores (or, more importantly since they are calculated rather than actual news events, the league tables, which was the initial query)?

If the site can prove you got the data from them (logs) there is certainly a violation of their terms, at the very least they can stop you accessing further data, hardly the way for an ongoing business to be built.

Much better to look for a legal source (often the US government is best for this, for example for exchange rates or census data, because of their public domain rules, but it doesn't work for sports).

Rob

P.S. My special interest in this subject: I'm the webmaster of http://www.worldclimate.com which has exactly this problem: how to protect the copyright on data which is DERIVED and processed from data which is initially public.

[Edited by rhoare on 12-18-2000 at 07:04 PM]

In my non-legal opinion if any site has something like "No part of this site may be copied or reproduced without written permission" in it's TOS then no matter how public the data you can't take it from that site.

The data may be public but the site owners/operators are adding value by presenting it for their visitors.

Slightly aside from my original question, but on the same topic all the same, I recieved this reply from the Anaconda (who produce various web fetch scripts) message board:

"A recent court decision validated the rights of sites to use headlines from other sites as the text to "deep link" back into their site. Moreover has built an entire business on this model and has received tens of millions of dollars in financing from firms like Reuters."

If that is the case it would seem that a sites TOC's, are meaningless in respect of doing the above.

On another point, is not every search engine(especially ones which contain text excerts eg google), which lists a site with such TOC's, blatently breaking them anyway?

On the other side of the coin, could sites with such TOC's (which would in effect make then non accessible to search engines etc etc), be breaking some sort of law over freedom of access or whatever?

[Edited by chilliboy on 12-19-2000 at 08:32 AM]

Originally posted by etLux
Hey, welcome aboard, Jonathan. We could surely use a word or two from a real lawyer in here from time to time.


I keep TELLING you guys, I know Lionel Hutz personally! He's a great lawyer AND an expert shoe repairman. I also know one of the partners of the famed and reputable legal firm Dewey, Hosem, and Howe.

As far as the actual statistics go, chilliboy, have you asked the original provider of the statistics if you could use them? I'd email them, tell them what stats you want, and why you want them, and see what they say. The worst thing that could happen is they'll say no

Calm down!

Sure - its all in hand. I was just throwing a few more 'viewpoints' into the debate.

The overall answer to the excellent points you make is "maybe." The law in this area is unsettled (to quote the Vice-President-Elect),"big time!"

Different courts in different jurisdictions come to different conclusions. Sometimes different courts say that the same body of law means different things; sometimes they disagree as to which body of law trumps the other body of law. Just last week, for instance, a federal district court in New York found Verio liable for trespassing after it used Register.com's whois database to obtain names of folks with soon-to-expire domains. [I'd like to get the citation for the "headline link-back" case Anaconda referred you to, if you have it, BTW].

If you are a Napster or MP3.com, and can afford to hire David Boies to plead your case if and when you get sued, you might feel OK about throwing caution to the wind. If you are a mom-and-pop (or just Mom, or just Pop) business, you might feel differently.

So, what's a webmaster to do? The best course of action, if you can afford it, is to hire a lawyer to assess the risks of your planned course of action, to suggest measures to reduce those risks, and to defend you if somebody sues or threatens to sue you nonetheless. Keep in mind that it's generally cheaper to hire an attorney to try to keep you out of trouble than it is to get you out of trouble.

If you can't afford an attorney, or just don't want to associate with our kind if you can help it, you will be safest if you get written permission from a site to use its content. And that's not to say that a lawyer, after reviewing your case and the law, might not suggest that you do that anyway.

In any event, these are general thoughts; I do not intend here to address any specific set of facts.

Best regards.

-- Jon

[As always, the above does not constitute legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is formed.]



[Edited by iBusinessLawyer on 12-19-2000 at 11:00 AM]

Cheers for the expert opinion.

If you wish to have a look at the thread on the Anaconda BB here it is: http://anacondapartners.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000728.html - I don't think you can post unless you are a 'Anaconda user'. But one of the directors has posted some interesting and what I think are valid points (i.e by using 'fetched' headlines, both parties win; the site that displays them for having uptodate content, and the source site through referred vistors).

From a personnal point of view I would say, which site can afford to turn away visitors, however they get there.

Well, I'll just throw out a couple of points to give you a sense of the legal thicket in this area. First, the "fair use" concept that the Anaconda poster refers to (i.e., "both parties gain something") applies directly only to copyright issues, and not to TOS issues. Moreover, it is notoriously difficult to predict whether a court will find that a given scenario constitutes a fair use.

Second, sites are not ALWAYS thankful for all traffic they receive. There have been a few so-called "deep linking" cases filed, in which one site sues a second site for linking to a page several layers below its home page. As far as I am aware -- and I have not researched the area recently, so don't rely on this, or, for that matter, any bulletin board post -- American courts thus far have only found webmasters liable for linking where the webmaster knew that the site linked to contained materials posted unlawfully.

You can take a look at some of these cases at http://ibusinesslawyer.com/cyberlinks/linking.htm.

All the best.

-- Jon

[As always, this isn't legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship has formed]

Originally posted by iBusinessLawyer
If you can't afford an attorney, or just don't want to associate with our kind...

Hey, some of my best friends are attorneys. I just don't leave the safe open when they come in the office... lol.