Talk:List of television stations in North America by media market

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Moonriddengirl (talk | contribs) at 12:11, 11 October 2008 (→‎The DMA listing should be restored: typo lol!). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The DMA listing should be restored

DMAs are not owned by Nielsen. They are owned by the FCC, and the FCC has no objections to providing that information.

See the article at List of TV markets and major sports teams in the United States. It is the same source. And comments should be posted at Wikipedia:Copyright problems#Remaining older issues, consolidated and Wikipedia:Copyright problems#October 6, 2008 in addition to this talk page. Apparently, there was an Oversight ticket on this subject.--User:2008Olympianchitchatseemywork 03:32, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am requesting the US "markets" be removed from the list as this is a list for NORTH AMERICA and Nielsen doesn't control all of North America markets (or any of the US markets, IMO). - NeutralHomer • Talk • Work • October 8, 2008 @ 04:04
Seconded -- while Nielsen controls the numbers and data, they do not set the boundaries of the "markets" -- that's the FCC's job. We have removed the sensitive data the last time we had problems, turning it into a mere list of coverage areas, but not only they've decided to copyvio that list, they decided to copyvio all of North America, even though Nielsen has nothing to do with Canada, Mexico, etc. This is lunacy. -- azumanga (talk) 11:53, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have removed the US information, so that the copyright "blockade" template can be removed (which I also removed) and the information for Canada, Mexico and other North American areas outside the US and US Territories can be viewed. - NeutralHomer • Talk • October 11, 2008 @ 06:23

←This one has not yet come up as current at WP:CP, but, as I said at 2008Olympian's talk page, I would have been at a loss how to handle it anyway when it did. When the Nielsen demand came in, it caused a bit of an uproar at AN (as some of you know because you were there; I was not. I noted it in passing.) The decision was made by our official lawyer to comply with a letter of complaint from Nielson. (As I'm reviewing that AN section, I find that I was mistaken myself in thinking it was a DMCA takedown notice; it was not, though routinely described that way, but Mike chose to handle it as though it was for CYA concerns. This is sensible, as DMCA only covers certain kinds of internet service providers, and our right to shelter under it has been challenged before.) A bunch of people were confused as to what specifically we are not to incorporate. User:Swatjester said, "For privacy reasons we cannot. OTRS tickets are emails to the foundation, and for privacy reasons, we don't disclose the contents of emails people send to the foundation. I understand that makes things difficult, but tickets are meant to be private; legal tickets even more so. If someone from the foundation wants to agree to disclose the contents, that's one thing, but for a volunteer to do so is inappropriate." Trying to provide his own guidance, Lawyer Mike said, "My own view is that the community should look at the information in question, try to make a guess as to what Nielsen thinks was wholesale copied from its content, and try to reproduce non-copyrighted information it can on restructured, retemplated pages." (These quotes, again, are copied from the AN link above and can be read with context there.) There's some conversation off-Wiki which might shed some light on what Nielsen is claiming, anyway, though it's hardly a reliable source: here. (It was submitted by "Anonymous Coward" :)) When I asked User:Jredmond for clarification with the also-challenged List of TV markets and major sports teams in the United States, he suggested getting around the problem by using the Census Bureau's MSAs. My request for further clarification went unanswered. I had planned to write Mike to ask about it, but after I fully read the AN thread figured there would be no purpose. He had already spoken on the subject, and my previous correspondence with him would suggest that I'd be unlikely to get a more definitive response. (Not that I'm saying the guy is unhelpful or unfriendly; on the contrary. Rather, I suspect what he said there is all that he had to say.)

My sense, based on the non-response I got when I also asked two other admins involved in the first run and generally at WP:AN is that nobody really wants anything to do with this one. This is unfortunate, but it makes sense. Very few of us have any real authority in such matters, and the people who do have authority seem to be telling us to do our best to comply...and to figure out how to do that on our own. With respect to the section below this, in that same AN conversation, User:Kaldari noted that any Wikipedia who disagrees with Neilson's stance need only "send a counter-notice to the Wikimedia Foundation" who would "then required by law to restore the deleted content." She/he said, "I've done this myself regarding bogus DMCA notices sent to Wikipedia and it's worked quite well. The only catch is that by sending the counter-notice you are assuming liability for any actual copyright infringements that are restored." In other words, if Neilson sues, it will sue the sender of that letter. Could they successfully? I sure don't know. Mike Godwin indicated at AN that he didn't know. Frankly, I couldn't afford to put my money there even if they lost the suit, as they have enough resources to financially cripple me long before I could (if I won) potentially compel repayment of my expenses.

So, here's what we have: Nielson said, "Don't use our stuff." We've been told to figure out what stuff they mean and get rid of it. As far as I can tell, unless somebody decides to "put their money where their mouth is" (to paraphrase Kalderi), we have no option but to try to guess where it applies and work around it. Once an article is tagged as a problem, we can't simply remove the tag and let it go without trying to figure it out, or we run a risk of malfeasance. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:10, 11 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is public domain information, not a copyright violation

IANAL, but in my opinion, any claim by Nielsen to own the concept of television market areas and rankings (whether they are called "DMA"s or otherwise) is completely without merit. I offer the following as evidence:

1. In 1972, the FCC published a list of the top 100 television markets, based on 1970 market data from Arbitron.[1] By publishing it in the Federal Register, the Federal Government has asserted that this information is in the public domain; "everything that appears in the Federal Register may be reproduced without restriction." This list still exists as 47 CFR §76.51, in the public domain, free for anyone to copy. Though these particular rankings are 38 years old, the actual market definitions have been updated in the regulation a few times (by removing and adding cities to certain markets), and it demonstrates that such market definitions and rankings are in the public domain.
2. In Veeck v. SBCCI, 293 F.3d 791 (5th Cir. 2002), cert. denied, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals held that when a model building code is enacted in a jurisdiction as law, the organization which wrote that code could no longer assert copyright over that which has been enacted as law; by becoming law, such codes entered the public domain. Similarly, the Nielsen DMAs are incorporated by reference into Federal law and thus also must be in the public domain. From 47 CFR §76.55:
"(2) Effective January 1, 2000, a commercial broadcast television station's market, unless amended pursuant to §76.59, shall be defined as its Designated Market Area (DMA) as determined by Nielsen Media Research and published in its Nielsen Station Index Directory and Nielsen Station Index US Television Household Estimates or any successor publications."
3. In Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, 499 U.S. 340 (1991), the Supreme Court held that the listings in a telephone book are not eligible for copyright protection, and rejected the "sweat of the brow" doctrine. Simply because Nielsen expended a lot of effort to determine television markets and their rankings does not give them ownership in the facts of the market definitions and their rankings. Indeed, the United States Copyright Act, at 17 USC §102 states:
"In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work."
The definitions and rankings of television markets are facts: they are ideas, systems, concepts, and/or discoveries, which with enough work and research can be independently determined by anyone else (as demonstrated by simple thought experiments, such as here or here), and so they are not creative expression which would be eligible for copyright. Add the fact that market definitions and rankings must be known in order to comply with federal law, and it ought to be an open-and-shut case that Nielsen should have no hope of ever prevailing in a copyright claim on this data.

It's even more absurd that the templates of television stations within each market had been deleted. These lists were independently compiled by Wikipedia editors from a variety of sources, and the only thing that had anything to do with Nielsen in these templates is the little rank designation in parentheses. An equivalent scenario would be that if AFI were to assert copyright in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies, our response would then be to delete the Citizen Kane article along with all 99 other movie articles, because they each happen to mention their ranking on AFI's list. Totally absurd. The missing templates and all templates' edit histories ought to be restored, to give credit where credit is due, to Wikipedia's editors who did the research. A lot of the stations that were on those templates are probably not even tracked by Nielsen, e.g. most low-power stations and many regional cable networks. DHowell (talk) 10:09, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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