In a BS post about Google’s TOS for Google Docs, the founder of Writely, the company acquired by Google for web-based office applications responded in the comments. Part of his response:

To be clear, Google will not use your documents beyond the scope that you and you alone control. Your fantasy football spreadsheets are not going to end up shared with the world unless you want them to be.

Maybe he was reading FatMixx?

And, on the subject of the silly post by Joshua Greenbaum, it sure seems like he’s just making a random controversy up to get traffic. Seriously, Greenbaum omits the key phrase “intended to be available to the members of the public” to fabricate a TOS controversy that Google is trying to own your documents. You know you’ve hit on a serious topic when the longest arguments in the comments thread talks about the proper way to parse the statement according to proper rules of grammar. What is the meaning of “is” anyway?

I probably shouldn’t comment on this because of what I do, so I won’t. I will say, go read this: Judge: Fantasy leagues may use MLB names, stats

Fantasy baseball leagues are allowed to use player names and statistics without licensing agreements because they are not the intellectual property of Major League Baseball, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

Baseball and its players have no right to prevent the use of names and playing records, U.S. District Court Judge Mary Ann Medler in St. Louis ruled in a 49-page summary judgment.

St. Louis-based CBC Distribution and Marketing Inc. filed a lawsuit against MLB after CBC was denied a new licensing agreement with the baseball players’ association giving it the rights to player profiles and statistics.

Major League Baseball claimed that intellectual property laws and so-called “right of publicity” make it illegal for fantasy leagues to make money off the identities and stats of professional players.

But even if the players could claim the right of publicity against commercial ventures by others, Medler wrote, the First Amendment takes precedent because CBC, which runs CDM Fantasy Sports, is disseminating the same statistical information found in newspapers every day.

“The names and playing records of major league baseball players as used in CBC’s fantasy games are not copyrightable,” Medler wrote. “Therefore, federal copyright law does not pre-empt the players’ claimed right of publicity.”

The ruling brings some relief to more than 300 businesses that run online fantasy leagues and have awaited the outcome of the lawsuit. In fantasy sports leagues, fans draft major leaguers and teams win or lose based on the statistical success of the actual players in major league games.

It wasn’t immediately clear what impact the ruling would have on existing agreements, such as the ones MLB has with CBS Sportsline.com, Yahoo Inc., ESPN.com and others. MLB also may appeal; a spokesman for the league did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

An ESPN spokesperson said Monday that the company would have no comment on the ruling.

How is this a Boy Scout thing? It’s so, um, odd.