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Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their statistics

theathletic.com

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Re: Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their statistics

#71

Post by looperhacks »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #68
haubey wrote: post #7

I'm not a lawyer, and I'm especially not a British lawyer, but I do have an Athletic subscription. The article discusses a lawsuit on behalf of Primer League and mostly lower league soccer players in England around their "personal data." > More than 400 current and former players have signed up to pursue gaming, betting and data-processing companies who utilise their personal statistics without consent or compensatio…

Do you need to license anything to do a radio broadcast of a game? All it’s doing is reporting the facts. I suspect it’s less immediately dismissible than you suggest.

If you broadcast the game, that's not just facts but playing audio that someone records. Just telling the result or current state, sure, that's just data - but I never heard that there's a license for that.

Re: Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their statistics

#72

Post by nickff »

bosie wrote: post #70
nickff wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those facts (STD test result and banking history) are protected by laws and private agreements which restrict your counter-parties; my understanding is that if some third party somehow learns those facts, they can do basically whatever they want with them (aside from blackmail).

are you saying that if i happen to stumble onto a data leak of those private facts, i can use them to create a non-blackmailing (non-profit?) business?

IANAL, but you can definitely gossip, and I think you can generally create a business based on selling the data (though you may be subject to some state laws).

Re: Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their statistics

#73

Post by warkdarrior »

bosie wrote: post #70
nickff wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those facts (STD test result and banking history) are protected by laws and private agreements which restrict your counter-parties; my understanding is that if some third party somehow learns those facts, they can do basically whatever they want with them (aside from blackmail).

are you saying that if i happen to stumble onto a data leak of those private facts, i can use them to create a non-blackmailing (non-profit?) business?

IANAL, but if you "stumble" onto data that is legally published, then you are free to use it in your business. It is on you to check that you are obtaining the data in a legal manner.

Re: Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their statistics

#74

Post by jon-wood »

h2odragon wrote: post #41
ramblerman wrote: post #34

It's no more "their" statistic than the sentence "Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon" belongs to Neil Armstrong. If I sit at a busy intersection and count the cars going by in a 5 minute span, do I owe something to each of those drivers. IANAL, but this is just ridiculous.

Trademarked names... They'll want a license before anyone can talk about them at all; and then they'll wonder where their fame went.

You joke, but the name and likeness of these players is something EA have to license each year for the next FIFA release.

Re: Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their statistics

#75

Post by remus »

warkdarrior wrote: post #73
bosie wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you saying that if i happen to stumble onto a data leak of those private facts, i can use them to create a non-blackmailing (non-profit?) business?

IANAL, but if you "stumble" onto data that is legally published, then you are free to use it in your business. It is on you to check that you are obtaining the data in a legal manner.

The law varies a lot around the world, but in the UK at least you need a lawful basis for collecting, storing and processing information like that (in the GDPR lingo, special category data). Unless you had very explicit permission from the individual I think you'd be hard pressed to demonstrate you had a lawful basis for collecting the information, as it would almost certainly not have been purposefully made available.

Re: Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their statistics

#76

Post by torstenvl »

haubey wrote: post #7

I'm not a lawyer, and I'm especially not a British lawyer, but I do have an Athletic subscription. The article discusses a lawsuit on behalf of Primer League and mostly lower league soccer players in England around their "personal data." > More than 400 current and former players have signed up to pursue gaming, betting and data-processing companies who utilise their personal statistics without consent or compensatio…

Facts are not subject to copyright in the U.S. However, there are other forms of intellectual property. In Illinois, where I am barred, there is a right of publicity - exclusive ownership over your identity when used for a commercial purpose. Could that extend to your name and unique statistical data when used as part of a for-pay entertainment endeavor? Maybe. I'm not aware of any case law one way or another, as I don't practice in IP anymore.

However, my point is that it doesn't seem completely crazy to me to think maybe the UK has some basis in law for this suit. It'll be interesting to keep an eye on it.

Re: Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their statistics

#77

Post by rusk »

zimpenfish wrote: post #45
ukoki wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Makes me wonder if you could train a machine learning model to take one or more football match video streams as input and turn them into a live 3d model. You then argue that the model simply documents the facts of the game, so does not infringe on the copyright of the original source streams. Then you sell live footage of the model (perhaps with slightly different camera angles)

> does not infringe on the copyright of the original source streams Unless you're getting the raw video stream from all the cameras, it'll be transformed through the producer and director's creative control and that, I suspect, would block you from doing this - it's not longer just "facts", it's a particular interpretation of those "facts" (cf bare recounting of historical events vs someone's book covering the same,…

> it'll be transformed through the producer and director's creative control and that, I suspect, would block y

I don’t know about that. You’re using the directors production to establish the fact but once you have extruded those facts, it could be argued in principal of not legally that this is a new creative work based off the mere facts.

Re: Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their statistics

#79

Post by closeparen »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #48
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that everything remotely involving data is forbidden under GDPR is giving it a bad name. I'm reminded of every Comcast sin being labeled as a "net neutrality" issue. Here, specifically, GDPR prescribes exemptions for journalism: https://gdpr.eu/article-85-right-to-freedom-of-expression-an... There are probably other exemptions that would apply for innocuous activity freely done in public, with the explicit u…

I doubt statistics won't be consider personal data. For example "Someone shot 5 shots on goal" is not exactly personal data. "Simon Munster played 54 mintues" should not be personal data it's a fact of a public event.

GDPR personal data is anything relating to an identifiable person. It’s not an expectation of privacy standard. Data gathered by observing you in public is protected the same as data you share with the controller in confidence.

Re: Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their statistics

#80

Post by closeparen »

ramblerman wrote: post #34

It's no more "their" statistic than the sentence "Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon" belongs to Neil Armstrong. If I sit at a busy intersection and count the cars going by in a 5 minute span, do I owe something to each of those drivers. IANAL, but this is just ridiculous.

If you record the license plates or images of the drivers, 100%.

If you record something like make and model, and you catch a car that’s rare enough in the area that there is only one person it could be, then also yes.

It’s absolutely wild to me that someone’s own observations of a public place can be legally restricted, but that’s GDPR.

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