How A Key Story About The 1919 Black Sox Scandal Was Completely Made Up... Due To A Confused Understanding Of Copyright

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It's baseball playoff season, and this week, as many have been highlighting, it's actually the 100th anniversary of the infamous 1919 Black Sox scandal, in which a bunch of players from the Chicago White Sox were later accused of deliberately throwing games in a deal with some gamblers. I've seen a few stories covering "facts and myths" about the scandal (which only really came to light the following year), but the NY Times has really great debunking of some myths about the scandal by the historian of Major League Baseball, John Thorn.So, what's this got to do with Techdirt? Well, according to Thorn's piece, a key fact that many have associated with the Black Sox was entirely made up, and the reason for it being made up was a confused (and incorrect) understanding of copyright law. To understand what happened, we need to take a few steps back. First, there's a fairly long history of what's known as "fictitious entries" that have been used in various reference works for ages -- with it being especially common in map making, where the practice is sometimes referred to as "trap streets." These are entirely fictitious streets (or sometimes towns) that are added to a map to try to catch a competitor who is just copying the work. In short, if your fake street (or dictionary entry, or whatnot) is showing up elsewhere, you know that it was copied from you. We even saw a very recent example of this kind of technique when the annotation site Genius altered apostrophe's to try to "catch" Google allegedly copying Genius's lyrics (which turned out not to be the case). Google itself has used this technique to catch Microsoft copying its search indexing for Bing.And, it remains a valid technique for catching copying -- which some might call a form of plagiarism. However, when it comes to copyright, it's a bit of a different story, because the underlying reference facts often aren't subject to copyright in the first place. The key court case on all of this is the famous Feist case in which one telephone directory company was accused of infringement for copying another phone book, with the "evidence" being some fake entries (kids: in the pre-internet days, to figure out how to contact someone, you went through a giant book of phone numbers). But as the Supreme Court eventually ruled, the directory listings weren't subject to copyright in the first place and (in the US, at least) you don't get a copyright for merely assembling a collection of facts if there was no creativity involved (which there shouldn't be for a phone directory!).That brings us back around to the Black Sox. The most well known book covering the Black Sox scandal was the book Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof, which was published in 1963 (Asinof also co-wrote the movie by the same title that came out in 1988 and was quite popular). A key character in the book was a figure by the name of "Harry F." As described on the "famous trials" website:

In his book, Asinof claimed that Rothstein told Sullivan in no uncertain terms that he did not want the Series to go to nine games--and to make sure it doesn't. In the book's account, Sullivan contacted a Chicago thug known as "Harry F" who then paid a visit to the starting Sox pitcher in game eight, Lefty Williams, and threatened harm to him or his family if the game were not thrown--in the first inning. Asinof described Williams being greeted by a cigar-smoking man in a bowler hat when he and his wife were returning home from dinner. The man asked to have a word with Williams in private. He did--and Williams got the message.

As to Harry F., who was said to have threatened Lefty Williams if he did not blow up in the first inning of Game 8 (the 1919 World Series was a best-of-nine affair, and the White Sox were on the brink of elimination): He did not exist. Asinof created Harry F., he later admitted, to guard against copyright infringement.

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More Fallout From The Hong Kong Protests Hitting eSports

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We were just discussing how the NBA and Blizzard each responded to the thin-skinned Chinese government's pressure on each in the wake of statements made supporting the Hong Kong protests that have raged for months now. The Blizzard half of that conversation involved the company yanking prize money and issuing a 1 year ban on a Hearthstone champion going by the handle Blitzchung, who stated support for the protests to sign off of a recent stream -- which, Blizzard claims, violated contest rules. The backlash to Blizzard's decision, was swift and severe. Unlike the NBA, which backtracked on its own appeasing comments to the Chinese government, Blizzard hasn't budged an inch.The fallout is continuing, if not intensifying. Most recently, famed streamer Brian Kibler quit Hearthstone entirely over Blizzard's decision.

Kibler, 39, is a widely-respected Magic: The Gathering player who, in 2010, was inducted into Magic’s Hall of Fame. Over the last couple years, Kibler amassed a 500,000-person following on Twitch streaming Blizzard’s Hearthstone, which he casts in an official capacity for Blizzard.“I certainly never expected that my position in the Hearthstone community would lead to me making a statement on sensitive topics regarding international relations,” Kibler wrote today, “but I have always viewed my strange place as a public figure in gaming as an opportunity to try to make the world a better place in whatever way I can, so here we are.”

Kibler’s statement joins a chorus of backlash against Blizzard’s decision. The Blizzard subreddit shuttered yesterday, full of complaints from players—some of whom pledged to quit the game entirely. At Blizzard’s headquarters, where it proudly displays company values like “lead responsibly” and “learn & grow,” a big piece of paper covered up the values “think globally” and “every voice matters” apparently in protest of Chung’s ban. Also at Blizzard yesterday, some employees staged an “Umbrella Protest” against the ban.

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