So what are the rules?

It's been alluded to here, but I'm on this point: When you're dealing with something like prep stats, I think you attribute it to MaxPreps or whoever not so much because of the ethics involved but because prep stats are such a mess in terms of consistency, and this simply covers your ass.

 

Disagree. MaxPreps isn't providing anyone anything. It's a module for a coach or overzealous parent to upload stats. MaxPreps would be attributed if there was someone representing that Web site at all of the games taking down these numbers. That's not the case.

As for the NCAA tournament/post-game press conference pool quote debate, just be damned sure that what you're using is actually what the person said. I've seen many, many occasions where the fools who the SID hires around these parts have turned "I don't know how in the world our team won by such a large margin" into "I don't know how our team won by that much."

 

Oh yeah. Quote sheets suck. I try to avoid them if at all possible, which is not always.

 

The maxpreps angle is interesting, and I had an experience I think is relevant there. 3-4 years ago, I was getting state soccer rankings directly from the coach who was compiling them. Apparently he was also sending them to a preps website -- can't remember if it was gavsv.com or gasports.com. At any rate, I referenced the rankings in something I wrote for the AJC, and shortly thereafter, the website had lawyers in the AJC offices demanding that we attribute them every time we even mentioned the rankings. I get a call from my editor, who wanted to know where I got them. I told him the coach emailed them to me. I was told to forego the rankings references unless it was a ranking the paper had done. And I didn't even get the information from that website, but they at least felt they had it copyrighted. Which brings me to maxpreps. At the bottom of their homepage is this line:

© 2009 CBS MaxPreps, Inc., a CBS Company. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use

While we may look at it as free information to be had by all takers, the fact that they took the time to put that on their website indicates they see it differently. So run maxpreps info if you must, but you do so without attribution at your own peril.

 

I'm no legal expert, but it seems to me using maxpreps stats, though perhaps a technical copyright violation of copyright, is not what their suits are worried about. The copyright warning is to protect maxpreps from a competitor from using their stats. A similar issue arose about 7 years ago between Howe sports data and whoever it was that bought the rights to pro baseball stats from mlb. Preps sports coverage and maxpreps have a symbiotic relationship in the sense that we promote a product that they have a vested interest in being publicized. Also, the amount of time prep sportswriters spend on the site itself I'd assume is a huge source of their digital audience.

 

Their web site and layout is copyrighted. Facts cannot be.