IANAL but I am someone who deals heavily in 1) scraping and 2) data and the analysis, enrichment & brokerage thereof. As such, I like to consult this for anything regarding US Copyright law: https://www.copyright.gov/circs
Steamdb.info is a derivative work, yes. And scraping is usually accepted as Fair Use, so both services are presumably within their rights, but they have no claim to the underlying data, only their process of enrichment. If someone were to build a new service based on the data presented on either site, there's not much they could do to stop them... short of getting them to agree not to do so via their ToS.
OpenAI is a great example of a company who built a derivative work on scraped data available under Fair Use, and then subsequently gated their data via their ToS. With such a popular precedent at play, I'd rather not use any services doing anything similar, especially when steamdb.info doesn't even have a ToS.
Thank you. Does this still hold good if steamdb was making money (ads, for example)?
Also, I am wary of using big companies like OpenAI as precedent. Big companies can do whatever they want and get away with a lot of stuff that individuals and smaller companies can only dream of
Yes, within some limits, but if one were to set up a business like that, it's a very good idea to seek out a consultation from a local copyright lawyer to know exactly what one can and can't get away with. Datasets are addressed as a "collective work", which lumps them in with everything ranging from art books, to hackernews, to scientific journals.
Personally, I wouldn't sell anything I gathered from a publicly available source anyways, mostly out of principle, but doubly so if that source is as well-paid as Valve.
> Personally, I wouldn't sell anything I gathered from a publicly available source anyways, mostly out of principle, but doubly so if that source is as well-paid as Valve.
Market reports are an entire industry, and people pay for them solely to avoid ingesting a tangential domain. It's ok to sell your transformations.
My advice is free, my custom tooling is dirt cheap with public examples, and my finished product costs money every month. It's basically price tiers based on your interest level.
Circular 14 addresses derivative works, including those based on data: https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf
Steamdb.info is a derivative work, yes. And scraping is usually accepted as Fair Use, so both services are presumably within their rights, but they have no claim to the underlying data, only their process of enrichment. If someone were to build a new service based on the data presented on either site, there's not much they could do to stop them... short of getting them to agree not to do so via their ToS.
OpenAI is a great example of a company who built a derivative work on scraped data available under Fair Use, and then subsequently gated their data via their ToS. With such a popular precedent at play, I'd rather not use any services doing anything similar, especially when steamdb.info doesn't even have a ToS.