Author: Marc van Hal
Date: 03:47:56 05/01/02
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On April 30, 2002 at 23:49:39, Russell Reagan wrote: >On April 30, 2002 at 16:01:33, Slater Wold wrote: > >>On April 30, 2002 at 14:42:50, Jeroen Noomen wrote: >> >>>During the last 6 - 12 months I have noticed a trend that there are very clear >>>indications that non-commercial programmers of chess programs make use of (parts >>>of) commercially available books. As I was in Maastricht during the WMCCC in >>>2001, lots of speculations and complaints were heard about this topic. From >>>several sources I know that also the Rebel books have been ‘hacked’ by people (I >>>will not mention their names, I am sure they know themselves whom I am talking >>>about). As the Rebel books are my lifework I want to put a very clear statement >>>in this forum. >>> >>>The Rebel books have been developped by me during a period of almost 14 years. >>>Not only is it handmade, it also contains lots of stuff you will not find in >>>other books. In the past it has happenend a few times that chess programs were >>>caught as not being made by the programmer himself. Examples are Quick Step back >>>in 1989, Greif, the several Crafty clones. As we can see from todays rules by >>>the ICCA, such programs are not tolerated anymore. And in my view this is fully >>>correct. >>> >>>Jeroen Noomen >>>Bookauthor for Rebel and Chess Tiger >> >>I can understand your frustration. You've worked just as hard as Ed or >>Christophe on Rebel/Tiger. No doubt your books add a considerable amount of Elo >>to these programs, and I am sure Ed and Christophe are very appreciative of >>that. >> >>However, I must warn you that laying claim to a series of chess opening moves is >>not going to be easy to defend. You cannot copyright moves in chess, as you >>cannot copyright dance moves. While you can copyright a mvs book, you are >>actually only copyrighting the format. Again, you cannot copyright chess moves. >> >>I think anyone found 'hacking' a chess program, or its book, should face a >>severe punishment. Anyone claiming something is their, when in fact it is not, >>should be punished. > >If someone has the skill to disassemble a binary executable and figure out how >something with the complexity of a chess program works from the ASM level, then >good for them. They earned the right to use what they learned. Note that I said >"to use what they learned", not "they earned the right to copy and paste". For >example, let's pretend that the alpha-beta algorithm wasn't widely known and >only a few programs used it. If someone begins analyzing the chess engine's code >and after a long hard time of trying to break the program down and figure it >out, someone finally figures out how the alpha-beta algorithm works, I think >they should be able to use that. Binary distribution does not translate to "you >can't look at this and learn from it." I don't think people should go around >just taking huge chunks of code out of other people's binary distributions or >source code distributions, but you can learn a lot from them and if you take the >time to do so, I see nothing wrong with using what you've learned. So when you >say, "anyone found hacking a chess engine", I think you are mistakenly throwing >people into a category that they do not belong. Hacking a file to derive a >general method isn't so bad. Hacking a file to derive some set data, such as an >opening book, is more questionable, but not entirely 100% worthy of "severe >punishment". Geez, it's a game people. Have some fun and lighten up. For people like me it is not a game but a way of life! Regards Marc van Hal > >>I am not defending these people, I am simply stating the fact that it would be >>easier to encrypt the books, than to go after those stealing it. > >If you encrypt the book, that does absolutely nothing to protect the data. The >reason is that if someone is skilled enough to hack binary executables, then >they will be talented enough to hack the binary executable and reverse engineer >the decrtyption algorithm. If it's in the binary, it's not secure. So basically >if the program is going to be able to decrypt the file, so is anyone else who >wants to bad enough. Granted it's something probably 99.999999% of the world >wouldn't be able to do, but there's always someone who can get that kind of job >done. > >Russell
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