Q: Is scraping publicly available projected fantasy statistics legal?
So long as I only scrape once a day / week from a server? I know historical facts are non-copyrightable, but what about projections?
What if I used an average of a variety of projected statistics? Would that be a violation of copyright from being a derivative? I imagine all projections are based on other projections and are very similar, so it seems very grey.
For commercial project.
A:
Your question raises multiple concerns:
(1) Is it legal scrape from public websites?
(2)(a) Is it legal to repost that data as your own, or
(2)(b) use that data in creating your own content?
Is it legal to use a webscraper? Generally yes, as long as the scraping is not disruptive to the servers or website infrastructure. So if you were sending requests every .01 seconds to their servers, yes, you'd probably be liable for the costs associated with accommodating your usage or the loss of revenue if you disrupt their service.
You should look at these individual site's terms of service, because webscraping very well may be a violation of their terms. The terms of service of a website is your contract, as a user, with the website. So, read the terms and find out what you might be liable for if you scrape those sites.
You're right, facts are not copyrightable. But the expression of those facts is. The form and formatting of those facts may be protected. You'd have to contact an attorney to spend some time researching based on the specific facts and circumstances of your case.
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