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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

#31

Post by wolco2 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #29
notahacker wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the challenge will be persuading courts that actions that users are paid to undertake in public and contractually agreed to reassign relevant image rights to are [i] 'personal data' under the intended meaning of GDPR and that [ii] something they didn't have informed consent about the possibility third parties might have access to when signing those contracts. Proving actual instances of harm suffered from the…

>Proving actual instances of harm suffered from the dissemination of unfavourable statistics is also going to be tricky (even though there are undoubtedly players that have lost out). All you would need is one club saying they searched the data for say "any player over six foot" and one player who fit the search term but the data was inaccurate.

That would only count toward one person one club not a widespread pattern.

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

#32

Post by HelloMcFly »

mschuster91 wrote: post #27
javajosh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think another argument is that the game is enjoyed in many forms, over radio, over television, streamed over the internet - and all of those rights must be purchased, etc. If the game statistics are another form of enjoyment, then it is another form, and should be subject to the same ownership issues as the other channels. OTOH, I think the argument is very weak. First, precedent is strongly against the players her…

> Player stats have never been licensed to my knowledge. Of course they are, that's the entire business model of data analytics companies - the customers are: - clubs and national teams themselves (e.g. German national team coaches Klinsmann and Löw were famous for early adopting data-driven training) - sports betting services, casinos and similar enterprises - TV and radio stations so that the commenters can (at an…

In those instances, nobody is licensing the statistics themselves, they are licensing access to the statistics databases that those organizations have compile and maintain. At least that's my understanding.

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

#33

Post by iguy »

bzb6 wrote: post #5
throwaway2245 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have access to the article but they'll surely be suing on GDPR grounds, for unpermissioned use of personal data, not the copyright (which, I agree, they probably won't hold). It's akin to an employer now tracking 24/7 whether you are sat at your home office desk (in my view: this shouldn't be allowed, with or without permission).

These are football players playing matches in public and the statistics are trivial I imagine, like how many passes they make and stuff like that, no? This seems like they just want free money and I hope they lose

The articles don't make it very clear what sort of statistics are involved. Are they talking about simple things anyone could scribble down while watching TV, like it's 1980? I thought that, for many sports, they now collected much more. Like where every player's feet were, to the cm, in every frame, that sort of level. Would this change any arguments?

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

#34

Post by ramblerman »

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.

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

#35

Post by matsemann »

javajosh wrote: post #23
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…

I think another argument is that the game is enjoyed in many forms, over radio, over television, streamed over the internet - and all of those rights must be purchased, etc. If the game statistics are another form of enjoyment, then it is another form, and should be subject to the same ownership issues as the other channels. OTOH, I think the argument is very weak. First, precedent is strongly against the players her…

> and all of those rights must be purchased

this have been tried for Chess, and deemed not applicable. Others are allowed to do live coverage of the moves without purchasing any rights. The organizers control the live footage, can ban them from entering the premises to interview players etc., so most will adhere to some form of contract. But if you have no ties there's nothing stopping you from making your own content based on purely the moves being made.

Update: Specifically, the moves are not copyrightable https://chess24.com/en/read/news/us-judge-agrees-with-chess2...

It also mentions "NBA vs. Motorola" in which NBA didn't own statistics of NBA games and others were allowed to use them.

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

#37

Post by Retric »

notahacker wrote: post #28
Retric wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think betting is likely to have an unusually negative economic impact on the players. Loss avoidance means people are more likely to remember players ‘underperforming’ expectations than exceeding them. That’s going to have a negative impact on their marketability as paid sponsors independent of actual performance. It’s questionable if they can win, but demonstrating damages may be the easiest part of this case.

I think proving a specific instance of lost sponsorship income to the satisfaction of a court is going to be extraordinarily difficult, especially if the argument is that consumers draw more adverse inferences from commercial datasets (which they generally don't have access to themselves; betting companies use them to help set the odds) than watching the matches. Even more so when the context is that virtually any em…

You can demonstrate harm without showing specific damages. Damaging someone’s reputation for example isn’t acceptable.

It’s the same basic principle as speeding or drunk driving being illegal even if nobody was actually harmed, putting people at significant risk of harm is not acceptable.

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

#38

Post by renewiltord »

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 write down the plate, the name of the intersection, and when the car passed by, then yeah that's personal data and GDPR regulated. You can't just compile that DB and sell it, dude. That's literally what GDPR is for. Not even slightly different from online advertising.

Hard for me to believe that personal statistics aren't like that. Meet all the GDPR conditions.

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

#39

Post by renewiltord »

bzb6 wrote: post #5
throwaway2245 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have access to the article but they'll surely be suing on GDPR grounds, for unpermissioned use of personal data, not the copyright (which, I agree, they probably won't hold). It's akin to an employer now tracking 24/7 whether you are sat at your home office desk (in my view: this shouldn't be allowed, with or without permission).

These are football players playing matches in public and the statistics are trivial I imagine, like how many passes they make and stuff like that, no? This seems like they just want free money and I hope they lose

Sure and when you drive your car in public, it's trivial for me to place cameras around the city and track your plate for movement data. You think I should be able to sell that?

Personal data doesn't just stop being personal data because it's someone else's.

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

#40

Post by ukoki »

matsemann wrote: post #35
javajosh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think another argument is that the game is enjoyed in many forms, over radio, over television, streamed over the internet - and all of those rights must be purchased, etc. If the game statistics are another form of enjoyment, then it is another form, and should be subject to the same ownership issues as the other channels. OTOH, I think the argument is very weak. First, precedent is strongly against the players her…

> and all of those rights must be purchased this have been tried for Chess, and deemed not applicable. Others are allowed to do live coverage of the moves without purchasing any rights. The organizers control the live footage, can ban them from entering the premises to interview players etc., so most will adhere to some form of contract. But if you have no ties there's nothing stopping you from making your own conten…

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)
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