Fantasy baseball, that is. A court has ruled that, despite their claims to the contrary, Major League Baseball can’t copyright public domain facts like player names and statistics. This means that the operators of fantasy baseball leagues don’t need a license from MLB to play fake ball with real players – which could be a boon to big fantasy sports contenders like Yahoo! (via Techdirt). Now let’s see what links we have on deck:

Merging the Atom – with MTV From PaidContent comes news that Viacom has made another online splash this week, by purchasing Atom, the makers of Shockwave gaming/animation software. The deal will have Atom and its properties – which include online game site AddictingGames.com and online video sites Atom Films an AddictingClips.com – fuse with Viacom staple MTV.

Know your CEO Barry Schwartz, who’s been liveblogging SES San Jose all week, provides a blow-by-blow of Danny Sullivan’s on-stage interview with Google bigwig Eric Schmidt. Check it out to see what Schmidt has to say about click fraud, fighting junky AdSense sites, and whether there’s a search ad ‘bubble.’

Afraid of getting screwed? Use protection! You may have read about AOL’s faux pas earlier this week, when they spilled the search info of over half-a-million subscribers all over the web. You also might be wondering how you can avoid those folks’ highly public, somewhat embarrassing fate. Well, News.com has come to the rescue with a helpful 2-page FAQ. Sample tip: start using an engine that doesn’t store usage data (if you, uh, happen to find one of the above that’s any good, let us know!).

What’s in a name? Not an ‘oodle’… At least, not anymore. The contextual ad outfit formerly known as Kanoodle has made a few alterations, not the least of which is a name change; their new nom de ‘net is ‘Seevast,’ says ClickZ, so get started updating the rolodex. Seevast will keep the Kanoodle brand in the family, though, to describe their “search-targeted sponsored links” business; they’ve separated out their content-targeted links, which will now operate under the name Pulse 360. The busy firm also acquired Moniker.com (the name remains the same), a domain name registrar.

When last we left these stories… Here are a couple of quick hits to bring you up to date on some continuing news items:

• Climbing aboard the Google Book train They were thinking about it, and now they’ve made it official: The University of California joins prestigious peers Harvard and Oxford in the Google Book Search scanning project, laying bare its voluminous libraries for all the net to see – one tiny excerpt at a time.
• Cooling the Google Jet suit Remember the hilarity dispute arising from the interior decoration of Sergey’s and Larry’s private jumbo jet? Well, the Google guys have decided to let bygones be bygones with their former designer, says Barry Schwartz, settling the lawsuit to the mutual satisfaction of all before retiring to their in-flight hammocks.

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