On 18/05/2010 12:49, Seb Bacon wrote:
Thanks for the explanation.
Does it seem wrong to anyone else here with better legal understanding
than me that the fixtures list is copyrightable? I can't put my
finger on why it seems wrong to me, but it does.
Maybe it's that the collection of word + position facts that make up a
book constitute the entire meaningful definition of the book, at least
in relation to its commercial value to its author.
However, the collection of location + date facts that make up a
fixtures list is actually a fairly minor part of the overall
enterprise that is the Premiership -- i.e. without fans knowing when
and where the matches are, there'd be nothing there of value for
anyone.
It doesn't have to have value in the sense that others can make use of
it. It doesn't have to have any value at all, in fact. Something
completely valueless can still be original, and hence subject to copyright.
Actually, no, I don't think that's what it is. I can't work it out.
Maybe it's not legally that I have a problem, just in terms of natural
justice and fairness :-)
Surely it can't really be *that* hard to come up with a fixtures
schedule... it must be an algorithm of some kind. Maybe I should read
the recent case and find out what extraordinary effort they reckon
they put in.
It's much more than a simple algorithm. It isn't just picked at random,
or even according to some simple sequence. There are all sorts of rules
about what is and isn't possible, and these have to be taken into
account. There's a good article on it at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulfletcher/2009/06/secrets_of_the_fixture_compute.html
- it's a lot more complex than it seems at first sight!
Mark
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