Update on Indian cricket scores delivered by SMS is proprietary information

An update on this blog from yesterday.

I have a real problem with a match owner asserting that live score information is proprietary content and can only be delivered to end-users by their approved supplier.

How can the number "5" (for example) be proprietary information?  In the context of a cricket match, if BBC Radio 4 reports the live score, should they be slapped with a huge cease and desist order?

I think it’s a different matter if the entire match is held in private.  It’s different if BSkyB buys the rights to a live television feed of a cricket match and insists the BBC can’t also broadcast the match live.  There’s direct value there.  Direct investment. 

There’s little investment in a live match score that only has value at the point of delivery as its quickly outdated by the next message. 

I’m puzzled by this story out of Ahmedabad in India here: Link.  It’s a follow-up to this whole issue, with Chirag Patel, founder of Net4Nuts, an Ahmedabad based content provider commenting:

"We can deploy a person in a live cricket match who will than forward us the score continuously which we can forward to our customers and no other company can claim the rights on this information or the news of cricket score"

I’m not quite clear if Chirag is going to go ahead and report the upcoming live match scores or not.  The article goes on to quote B P Singh, CEO of Airtel saying:

"If high court wants us not to provide cricket updates on mobile, our customers will not get the live updates."

I think this is a very limp-wristed position.  I just don’t understand where the proprietary value is stored here.  A TV feed is produced and delivered by a team of people.  A match score can be typed in on a laptop or mobile phone???

Yes it’s laborious, but there shouldn’t be a law banning me from setting up a service to deliver match scores and simply putting a guy in the stadium on a live call to an operator typing in score updates.

I must have seriously misunderstood the whole issue.  Either that or all parties are off their heads.