Under copyright laws, Capital, (or any other agency distributing such data) would be forced not to eat the $1 cost abut the cost of 4 sets of PP's multiplied by the number of customers who get them. If 1000 patrons are getting the pp's and each track costs (hypothetically) $.50, then they are eating $2000 per day. Based on that number, Capital would need to be handling over $200k in bets generated by those pp's. Charging $1 for the information allows them to avoid a copyright lawsuit for distributing copyrighted material for free. Capital may buy it from Track-Data but that doesn't allow it's free distribution.
Honestly, I have never quite understood the concept of free info. If you are going to the track you buy a Form or or download pps (for a fee!) or buy a program when you get there. OTB's got in the habit of hanging pages of the Form on the walls back in the 70's, something NO RACETRACK I know of has ever done. When the Form threathened action, some OTB's stopped. The idea was that "limited" free info was OK for some but that most customers would be frustrated with sharing pages of a pulled apart Form with the rest of the place and would but their own.
From Mister B
"I recieved the same letter, I am not going to use their account any longer. They will feel the impact, but I think they are under the GUN from other agency's in a law dispute.
Anyway, I never really used them. I think I am going to activate my NYRA account when Belmont opens.
04-19-2007 10:09 PM "
You never used the pp's but even though you are NOT effected by the change, you wont use Capital any more. You will use NYRA. Will they send you free data daily for 4 of the most popular tracks? Would you leave them if they started charing $1 for such info?
Overall, I would not be surprised to see more issues like this in racing. It's a data driven game and companies that compile and store data are becoming more and more aware of it's widespread distribution. I liken it to the music industry. When I was a kid I copied a favorite song onto cassette tapes from the radio. No one really cared. With computers making file sharing easy music companies went berserk over free distribution of their product. The very liberal use and distribution of racing data has become a problem for the owners/compilers of the data and we will see more of these problems.
Rather than me angry about a free service being removed, be thankful that it was available free for a time.
When threatened with leagl action that could but the company out of business any company would do the same thing. They have to "make right" on the contractual agreement or come under penalty.
For the point of view of the owner of such data, maybe BTW or someone else associted w/ the Form may have more info.
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