|
|
|
Topic: Copyrighting of Chess Games
| |
|
|
Author
| Message |
|---|
|
|
I found this article while I was doing an internet search on chess related things, and found information in it disturbing.
I would like to know what you all think of it. An excerpt is below:
The Kibitzer
Chess Games Belong To The World
By Tim Harding
Some chess players may think they will benefit if the recent FIDE
move towards the copyrighting of chess games goes ahead, but I
can assure you that 99 per cent of the chess community will suffer
and that means you, dear reader. So I call on you all to put pressure
on FIDE, directly or through whatever national chess organisation
to which you may belong, to call a halt to this lunacy now. What
should be protected is the "value added" of good notes by the
players and good writers and chess teachers, not the "bare" scores
(whether in print or on a web page or a computer database) that
just give the moves played in a game.
Just to give the background for those who don't know the issue,
FIDE announced a few weeks ago the rules for its forthcoming
knockout world championship contest and these included under
Paragraph 10 - Playing Conditions (10.2 c): "The players' score
sheets are the property of the players and FIDE, and FIDE has
exclusive rights to publication." Read those words carefully; I shall
return to them later.
I am not a lawyer so will not go into many legal technicalities here,
but for those who want to explore that aspect I recommend you
read Mark Crowther's lengthy article on the topic in The Week In
Chess, No. 146, which includes a legal opinion that sounds about
right to me. You can easily find TWIC on the Net and read it for
yourself.
My arguments in this column are essentially layman's views but
are based on my 30+ years as an active chess player at a fairly high
level, 25 years as a published chess author and journalist, and now
with a publisher's hat to wear too!
Actually I doubt if FIDE have a legal leg to stand on, given there is
a century of precedent of free publication of chess games
worldwide while previous legal attempts to copyright games (in a
few countries) have failed, so I hope that this is just a try-on and
that they will back down. However, let us look at the scenario if
FIDE were to win a test case in a major jurisdiction such as the
USA, United Kingdom or Germany.
As a practical master-level correspondence player, I might find it
beneficial to my results in the short-run if my games were harder to
get hold of, so that my opponents could not so easily prepare for
me, and it may be that FIDE hope the majority of master level
players will back their move for that reason. Maybe by refusing
permission for my losses to be published, I could even spare
myself some blushes. However, those gains would be more than
outweighed by my not easily being able to obtain the games of
opponents and of other players who are approximately at my level,
as well as by having to pay to see what the Kasparovs and
Topalovs of this world are getting up to.
Certainly the top grandmasters are the only players, if any, who
will make any money out of this. The games of major events will
still be available, but somebody will get paid for them. We'll come
to that in a minute. The games of ordinary Joe and Jill Soaps
played in ordinary chess competitions could become
unpublishable, except where players themselves send them in for
publication.
In a worst case scenario, we could even see chess journalists and
publishers sued for articles and books already published but it is
more likely that FIDE would attempt to enforce their view on a
"from now on" basis. If FIDE succeeded in controlling the game
scores in events under its own jurisdiction, the world
correspondence chess governing body ICCF might be tempted to
try and follow suit, and the same could go for other bodies that
organise chess events, such as national associations and even clubs
and commercial tournament organisers.
Curiously with correspondence games, there is a split. Traditional
postal games, unlike over-the-board games, are not played in
public so usually only the players and perhaps the tournament
director ever sees the moves. On the other hand, email games
played under the auspices of ICCF and IECG cannot at present be
hidden from future opponents, as these organisations email
monthly reports (including the PGN game scores of all completed
games) to all those who compete in their events. Of course they
could change that policy.
Undoubtedly many chess organisers have doubts about the value of
chess databases, and particularly free games postings on the Net,
because it hits at a possible source of income for them and makes it
harder, for example, to produce a saleable tournament book when
all games are already available freely. However, if they were to
back FIDE's move, they would in my opinion undermine the
popularity of the game. For example, newspaper columnists would
have to tell their editors they can only publish a game by a player
who is not fifty years dead if he or she has actually sent them the
game; otherwise a fee will be payable, just as radio stations have to
pay a fee for every record they spin. Speaking as somebody who
wrote a national chess newspaper's weekly chess column for
almost two decades, the editor and his accountant would say
goodbye and run a column on Scrabble or knitting instead.
Now to put on my chess publisher hat, I would fear that "Chess
Mail" (and many other magazines) might have to cease publication
if copyright was enforceable on correspondence games. At the very
least, we could only publish games sent to us by either one of the
players or the tournament director and would require a written
confirmation from them that we could publish the game. We might
even have to cut references to other players' games from the notes!
The chess publishing world would shrink dramatically. You would
probably be left, in each main language, with only two or three
giants who would swallow the cut in their profits and pay up in
return for the pleasure of seeing most of their competition vanish -
and maybe a few minnows whose circulation and income would be
too small to be worth suing.
With my chess author hat on, I can tell you that publishers would
eagerly start commissioning books on areas of the game that
wouldn't easily fall under FIDE's hammer (e.g. endgame books,
books on 19th century chess, chess variants and players'
autobiographies) while the authors of openings manuals would be
told that it is no longer OK to include modern complete games
unless they are accompanied by a notarised letter of permission
from one of the players. In other words, forget openings books...
|
The see the complete article, visit the following link:
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/kibitz17.txt
|
|
|
This is just my personal opinion…I could not care less. I lost interest in high level chess a long time ago. I’ve got enough old books and a 2.5 million game db that could keep me entertained for the rest of my life. I prefer the old books anyway.
I’m reading a book on Bisguier’s best games now and he tells about his 1957 match with Reshevsky where, after putting in a day’s wok at his job at IBM, he’d get a bag of fast food and catch a cab to the match site to play his game. Those guys played for the love of the game.
When I played tournament chess we played for a hundred dollars first. If you were a class player you were playing for a crappy book or cheap trophy. Certainly nobody was playing for the money because there wasn’t any.
I can enjoy chess even if none of the big boys ever play again and if I never see one of their games it won’t bother me. I know, I know…I’m an old curmudgeon, but that’s how I feel.
|
|
|
The vast majority of players lose money at chess. Most of the money masters make come from amatuers. Amatueres are the ones who will suffer from copywriting chess moves. Our response is simple boycott books with copywrited games and boycott tournments that are profitable for professional players.
Boycotting tournaments that are profitable for professional players is already a money saving idea. I dont enjoy a tournament any more becuase there are grandmasters present. I attempt to determine the true cost of a tournament by estimating how much money I could expect to win, on average, if I could play the tournament thousands of times. Generally the lower the prize fund the more economical the tournamnet.
|
|
|
amateurs, dude... amateurs.
|
|
|
|
|
