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A comment on Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their statistics. Parent comment

Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by slg on Thursday November 26, 2020 @01:15PM (#25222300)
The results of my last STD test and the transaction history of my bank account are also facts. We have decided some facts deserve specific protections, at least in the US. So I don't think we can dismiss the players here with "facts are not copyrightable" without knowing what specific statistics are being recorded and to which the players reject. Sports technology has exploded over recent years and the data collection of athletes is now an industry of its own. There can be a range in the degree of ownership that a player deserves from the total number of goals scored in public matches to the heartrate of a player throughout a private practice session.
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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by nickff on Thursday November 26, 2020 @01:43PM (#25222546)
Those facts (STD test result and banking history) are protected by laws and private agreements which restrict your counter-parties; my understanding is that if some third party somehow learns those facts, they can do basically whatever they want with them (aside from blackmail).
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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by bosie on Thursday November 26, 2020 @02:01PM (#25222696)
are you saying that if i happen to stumble onto a data leak of those private facts, i can use them to create a non-blackmailing (non-profit?) business?
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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by warkdarrior on Thursday November 26, 2020 @02:26PM (#25222868)
IANAL, but if you "stumble" onto data that is legally published, then you are free to use it in your business. It is on you to check that you are obtaining the data in a legal manner.
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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by johnisgood on Thursday November 26, 2020 @07:29PM (#25224555)
What if it was not intended to be legally published, but you still got access to it because they could not protect it well?

Someone I know actually got access to some stuff this way before; got access to a gold mine that was supposed to be private but someone misconfigured the webserver.

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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by chrismcb on Friday November 27, 2020 @04:17AM (#25226858)
In the US, once a secret is out, it is no longer a secret. The person who originally disseminated the secret might be punished, but subsequent use wouldn't be. Facts aren't protected by copyright, they are typically just secrets. Your medical history is secret, and protected by law that would punish the person releasing them. But once released there isn't much you can do about it.
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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by colejohnson66 on Friday November 27, 2020 @09:25AM (#25228904)
Using a somewhat relevant real world analogy: if I go into a house that should’ve been locked (but wasn’t), and I know I don’t have a right to be there, I can’t argue what I did was legal. It’s the same thing with computers: you can’t use[a] data you don’t have a right to use.

[a]: legally use

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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by triceratops on Friday November 27, 2020 @12:10AM (#25225696)
What if you see an open door with gold coins inside? Same answer.

The most you can do is inform the owner that their data isn't protected. And even that, unfairly IMO, is legally dicey.

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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by bosie on Thursday November 26, 2020 @08:01PM (#25224717)
if by legally published you mean that the publisher got a legally binding agreement with the patients to publish those 'facts', sure.

but the parent was not putting constraints on how i obtain it ('somehow learns those facts'). if the publisher makes a mistake and i hit the URL and the data is automatically downloaded, i didn't do anything wrong. doubt i can then just use that information though?

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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by remus on Thursday November 26, 2020 @02:56PM (#25223072)
The law varies a lot around the world, but in the UK at least you need a lawful basis for collecting, storing and processing information like that (in the GDPR lingo, special category data). Unless you had very explicit permission from the individual I think you'd be hard pressed to demonstrate you had a lawful basis for collecting the information, as it would almost certainly not have been purposefully made available.
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Re:Players to sue for hundreds of millions over use of their... by nickff on Thursday November 26, 2020 @02:22PM (#25222838)
IANAL, but you can definitely gossip, and I think you can generally create a business based on selling the data (though you may be subject to some state laws).
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