Is this Copywritting?

Hey,

Would it be illegal to take statistics of someone else’s site and put them on your own? Basically I want to put up a football website but at the moment don’t have the funds required to pay for statistics. What I want to do is gather player statistics from each round and work out totals, averages and other relevant stats and then post them on my website.

Roosta

 

God, copywriting doesn't mean copied writing.
This should go on the legal issues forum or somewhere else.

 

What you're talking about isn't copywriting. You probably mean copyright which protects "works of authorship" from being stolen.

I ran into a similar problem before and found out the copyright law on statistics hasn't been settled yet: http://www.copyright.gov/docs/hr2652.html. Which makes sense because the compilation of data isn't a "word of authorship." However, any analysis of that data is protected by copyright law.

In my situation, I used the statistics, made sure to cite the source, and did the other statistical analysis (averages, etc.) I wanted to do.

 

I have been told that you can use any statistics you wish, as long as you post the source.

 

Actually, in the US, statistics were ruled to be in the public domain, and therefore free-use by anyone and everyone. So long as we're talking about sports statistics, you're in the clear.