Public Domain Information: Where is the Line Drawn?

Baloney.

Don't listen to baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad advice like that unless you are willing to face the cost of defending a copyright lawsuit and paying the settlement.

If you want to learn about where the line is drawn on Public Domain consult a lawyer or buy this indispensable resource written by one and put out by the non profit Nolo.com:

The Public Domain: How to Find Copyright-Free Writings, Music, Art & More

Sort of! Actually, if the information is a fact, like the baseball statistics in this example, then they cannot be copyrighted and you would be free to publish the information in whatever form you wish.

In fact, there are a number of classes of works that are NOT covered by copyright:

Facts
Works created by the United States Government
Works not fixed in a tangible form of expression
Ideas, concepts, principles, or discoveries
Words, phrases, or familiar symbols

A compilation of facts in an original form can be copyrighted. The facts themselves cannot. So you could quite easily select facts published in another source and then arrange those facts in an original way and copyright the resulting work yourself.

Similarly, ideas or concepts cannot be copyrighted. So if I come up with a great new idea for finding high paying, low competition keywords, I cannot copyright that idea -- I can only copyright the form in which that idea is expressed. So I could put out an e-book describing the idea and copyright the e-book, but the idea itself cannot be copyrighted -- so someone else could re-publish that idea in a new and original form.

For example:
Einstein's theory of special relativity is not copyrightable because it is an idea (or concept or principle). However, Einstein's article, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," in which he explained and expressed the theory, was copyrightable.