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mjdtoday at 6:36 PM1 replyview on HN

Best of luck with this. About twenty years ago there was a website that displayed play-by-play of games in progress with a much more minimal display than yours: just a scoreboard, balls and strikes count, and an indication of who was on base.

MLB crushed them with a copyright infringement lawsuit, claiming copyright over the plain factual description of the play-by-play. It was bullshit, of course, since simple factual descriptions aren't protected by copyright. But website guy couldn't fight MLB in federal court.

Sorry I don't remember the name of the site. I hope it turns out better for you than it did for them.


Replies

kodablahtoday at 7:02 PM

My guess is this is leveraging GDX same as "Gameday" uses (or used to use). https://gdx.mlb.com/components/copyright.txt states

> Only individual, non-commercial, non-bulk use of the Materials is permitted

Unsure if this falls within. I have written my own scripts against the XML regularly updated there, but am unsure if they allow it to be used on a shared site.