General Forum

I guess if the site has no legal recourse to take (based on the recent comments), maybe Admin could reach out to work with BSC?

The site seems to be trying to provide an alternative to eBay and the design actually looks pretty good.  Maybe they would pay to work with TCDB and we could get something out of it? 

I wouldnt join him. Like most things online it will probably be gone bybnext Thursday.  But i do like his idea...if he can run it like Sportlots and not warehouse eveyones stuff just be the "ebay" middle man it is actually a cool idea.

Although a disclaimer to say "and by research, i mean copying this site" would seem to be appropriate.

Fair use doesn't apply here because that site's primary focus is commerce.

Usually photos of products are covered under fair use and cannot really be claimed under ownership by the person who took the photo or made the scan because they do not actually have ownership of the likeness. That is held by the manufacturer. So when it comes to websites, there are certain primary scopes where fair use applies. One in particular is archiving sites which TCDB would fall under because they are documenting things that exist. This is what protects TCDB from infringement by the companies that make the cards. Then there is no actual relationship between TCDB and this other site in regards to the images, use of images, etc outside of the text on the Terms of Service that say you can't use data from the site without permission.

I had consulted a copyright attorney in the past regarding things like this, when I was doing archiving and hosting content created by others. Fair use allowed me to continue to use it. I may not explain it correctly, but the issue here is not about fair use or copyright or about the images themselves, rather more complicated situation of one site using "data" from another in bulk without permission. So it has to be approached to be about data and not images.

Sign me up for any class action suit, he has several of my Akim Aliu scans as well :D

I wonder if ADMIN could add a copyright over all the images and then we could see if people are stealing images.

I'm glad my scans are bringing so many people joy.

I'm going to add one more thing in here about "illegal data usage". Beckett has won a bunch of lawsuits against websites using their "proprietary information" that was JUST checklists! Beckett intentionally had errors posted in tons of CL's and sued everyone they knew about that just copied that info. They won all of those lawsuits or the companies just shut down everything. And of course, Beckett bought nearly everything else that even slightly resembled their info. Luckily, TCDB didn't fall victim to that as well and that is because of the incredible job the members here do to make sure the CL's on here are actually correct. What I'm saying is that if Beckett can sue for other sites copying their incorrect CL's, TCDB should own the rights to our meticulously crafted CL's that go way beyond anything else listed on the internet. How many companies out there have all the crazy VAR's that we've added here in the past few years? I'd say none of them. I don't care that BSC is using the info to try to sell cards or help others sell cards. That doesn't bother me, but saying HE DID ALL THE WORK is BS and I don't like that at all. Then using our images is just rude when so many people already know it is not true that he did ANY of the work. All he did was build a site and pilfer all the info from here into his own site!

As I have been reading these comments the last few days, I was a bit torn.  In one sense I don't care they took the scans (even though I did find one of mine on there), and in another, I was a bit upset he didn't give any credit to TCDB for getting the majority of his site through this one.  In the back of my mind I thought about how you can't copyright checklists, and the cards are the property of the card companies (likeness that is, not necessarily if you have them in your possession).  But I also remembered the Beckett lawsuits and for a while many on this site were afraid they'd go after this site as well.  I think Spaz pretty much says my thoughts, not crediting TCDB for doing all his work is the biggest issue I have.  Even just a disclaimer on the bottom of the page and acknowledgement on the about us would be fine with me.

It does show how much people rely on this site for accurate data.  When I check out cards on Listia or Ebay, and sometimes even COMC, its funny seeing how they obviously use the data from this site to sell their cards.  In the last year I've seen countless auctions with the heading being "VAR- ONE DOT" or something similar for the Topps and Donruss cards of the 80s/90s that the members here spent countless hours making accurate.  While I could do without all the variations, I do appreciate all those that help to make this site better, and as a result others have used it as well,  It would just be nice for the acknowledgement.

I have noticed many cards i have uploaded on to TCDB are also on the BSC site,exact same cards

I've enjoyed reading the comments from the armchair intellecutal property attorneys on TCDB!  It's a topic that there's enough general awareness about but what's actually legal versus copyright infringement is complex and varies on a case-by-case basis.  I studied intellectual property in law school (took several classes) and being a IP lawyer was one of my career options.  I never practiced IP law, but I've always been interested in it.

It's frustrating that someone used the images of cards that you posted on TCDB.  But once you posted that image on TCDB and the internet, it basically became fair game for others to use.  The card companies own the copyrights to the card images.  If you somehow altered the image to provide enough creative difference to be meaningfully different, then you would could have a copyright to that artistically revised image.  But that's not what we're doing here on TCDB.  Topps and Panini aren't going to sue you, though because it's not worth their trouble and it's likely you do have a fair use exemption since you are not trying to profit off the image itself or diminish the market value of their cards.  You are merely providing the image to TCDB for archival and information purposes.  If you tried to sell images of the card, especially as an alternative to the actual card, you would risk copyright infringement. 

The case for TCDB as a compiler of all those images is a little further down the slope, but since the site serves the function as an archivist and information resource, there's a strong basis for concluding TCDB's use of the images is also a fair use.  And again, TCDB is not selling the images nor diminishing the value of the card companies versions of the cards.

BuySportsCards.com is not selling the stock images of the cards or counterfiet copies of the cards, so they are not profiting from the card company's copyrighted works either.  They are using the images to archive and illustrate cards, much like TCDB does.  Just because they are a for-profit entity doesn't mean their archiving of the checklists and images is any less of a fair use than what TCDB does.  The Beckett Marketplace does the same thing. 

The fair use exemption frequently looks at how the usage diminishes the copyright value of the copyright owner's economic value of its copyrighted works.  It would be difficult for Topps or Panini to argue the economic value of their copyright on individual cards is diminished by this web site's usage of images of their cards.  If anything, it embellishes the market value of their products by providing another means to promote the liquidity of trading cards.

I think we'd need to understand how BuySportsCards.com extracted data from TCDB to understand whether there was actual copyright infringement of TCDB's intellectual property.  TCDB's data and structure and mechanism for compiling/displaying the data form the basis for TCDB's intellectual property.  That would be the most likely avenue for TCDB to claim copyright infringement.  It's been too long since I studied IP law for me to know where the law stands on this aspect of intellectual property protection.

Beckett crushing Zistle and other similar web sites probably had less to do with actual copyright infringement than the threat of fighting Beckett about possible copyright infringement.  Those web sites were basically hobbyists who put in a lot of time building their sites.  Maybe they copied stuff from Beckett.  I don't know.  But when a big company threatens an Average Joe with litigation, Average Joe is most likely just going to stop - even if they weren't actually violating copyright law.  In Zistle's case, Beckett paid the original developers some money as a way of getting them to stop their web site.  That says to me that Beckett wasn't 100% confident they'd win in court, so they made an economic decision to pay Zistle to die instead of paying their lawyers to litigate.  The people at Zistle made an economic decision to take Beckett's money instead of paying lawyers to fight.  (By the way, someone recently attemped to get Zistle going again, but it's now dead again.) 

I really hope Admin posts at some point how this situation is being handled.  I'd really like to understand what IP principles were at play here.

Finally, I'd like to see a site like BuySportsCards.com succeed.  Maybe not them if they infringed TCDB's IP.  It seems like a good idea and it's better organized/easier to use than SportLots.  It, or something like it, has the potential to be a good site for buyers and sellers.  We need better alternatives to eBay and SportLots for low-mid value cards.