I blogged about this story too. What I don't understand is that anyone who wants statistics on ballplayers can just go to baseball-reference.com and look at them. Even better, you can download the dataset in MySQL format and build your own db.

More at my blog, here.

Some commentary on this suggest it's really about the use of team names and official player photos. The stats got thrown into the complaint with the kitchen sink.

That should be team logos, not names.

I'm guessing they will differentiate based on contemporary stats (useful for fantasy leagues) versus historical ones (not so useful). They probably want protection for just the current year which might allow the distinction.

This may not be about fantasy baseball, it may be about videogaming or something else. You can't fully protect your intelectual property by defending it from only certain uses.

Of couse, a court might ultimately distinguish between fantasy baseball and other uses of MLB information. This would free MLB to fully support fantasy baseball while not losing the right to protect the information for other uses.

MLB is run by morons who protect drug abusers.

They need a real Commisioner and some owners with IQs higher than 50.

Thank God for the NFL.

Go Steelers!!!

This will be about logos and other copyright and trademark issues, not stats. Otherwise newspapers would need to pay a fee to publish stats in their stories which they do not.

I seem to remember this story from the begining of last season as we got our departmental fantasy league up and running....
I also don't see how baseball can win here-- all the papers publish a box score of every game, which contains all the relevant fantasy stats, and that info is in the public domain.
Otherwise, how would baseball get any coverage?

I do know that Bonds had some sort of special status in all of this-- in a few fantasy games he was listed as SF-OF or something like that, by position and not by name or image.

It won't kill fantasy though-- it all started well before the computer age, back when someone used to go compile all the stats by hand from the daily box scores in the paper.
Its a great way to learn math when you are young!

Bonds' special position is that he has excluded himself from the marketing agreements that the players associations make on the players' behalf.

He separately negotiates his own fees for baseball cards, using his likeness, etc.

I am not a lawyer but I would argue that since Major League's teams sell scorecards at games they are facilitating and encouraging production of an independent statistical account of the game.
If I scored the game with my very own pencil using that form I would argue that I hold the rights to those statistics and could transfer them to anyone else at my discretion.

i'm sorry, but doesn't this sort of (semi-)maniacial fanbase-following of any major sport INCREASE its popularity? sure, fantasy geeks (myself included, fantasy FOOTBALL that is; i've been meaning to take the jump into F-BB, but now i'm not sure) can indeed care more about players on their virtual teams than the real teams they play for, but it's quite obvious to say that without the actual league, there would not be anywhere near this level of fantasy following. for instance, there are some very good SABR-inspired computer games and leagues one can join but many of these games do not have the oh-so-precious MLB license to import REAL stats. what i'm saying is that the REALITY of the sport matters a great deal, even (perhaps especially) for FANTASY fans.

bud selig obviously doesn't get it. if he did, he may be wary of alienating a growing segment of baseball's fanbase (existent and potential) that one day may not care for the actuality of statistical data. unfortunately, i'm still one of those 'traditional' fans who opt for simulations based on actual performance. we're a dying breed.