Author: Ricardo Gibert
Date: 16:02:31 05/02/02
Go up one level in this thread
On May 02, 2002 at 11:44:53, Uri Blass wrote:
>On May 02, 2002 at 11:30:53, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>
>>On May 02, 2002 at 11:15:44, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>>
>>>Is it 'my' book then?
>>
>>Sorry for the rhetorical question, I'll restate.
>>
>>>>So if you for example play 1000 of automated games in one opening against
>>>>Rebel, and create a book from that, thats ok.
>>
>>I would assume it is. I'll assume it as a basic right to compile an
>>opening book from a set of games from other players for the rest of
>>this discussion.
>>
>>>>But a book is a lot more. It is a collection of openings, the weight of
>>>>different lines, the ? and !s.
>>
>>Now, the problem is that there is an equivalence between the book and a
>>large enough set of games played by a program with that book. Given the
>>latter, I can determine the former. Saying I can do one and not the other
>>makes no sense.
>>
>>>>A lot of people seem to fail to understand the difference between holding
>>>>copyright over an opening and a book. You obviously cant copyright an opening.
>>
>>I would think the same, i.e. an opening cannot be copyrighted. But Jeroen
>>is claiming exactly that in this thread, namely that people should not
>>be allowed to copy ('steal') lines from the Rebel book.
>>
>>--
>>GCP
>
>He says that you have the right to buy books, analyze the theory lines and use
>your analysis in the book(this is what he did if I understand correctly).
>
>I see no difference between it and buying Rebel,analyze the lines in rebel's
>book and decide based on analysis which lines are good to copy to your book.
>
>I see no reason to assume that Rebel's book should be more protected than other
>books that are not chess software.
>
>Uri
I think Noomen's position can be distilled to this:
The purpose of a chess playing program is to benefit its human users. This
purpose does _not_ include benefiting other chess playing programs. A human can
learn and use the lines from the software as this constitutes "fair use" and
this is in fact a major purpose of the program, but a program cannot as it is
diametrically opposed to intent and therefore does not constitute "fair use".
This intent on the part of the programmers is unambiguously clear and therefore
the use of Rebel's opening lines by other chess playing program is a violation
of their copyright.
I should hasten to add that I disagree with this. To me a chessplayer, whether
human or computer program are equivalent as far as playing chess is concerned. A
reasonable feature for any program to have is the ability to learn and this
includes the learning of opening lines whether they originate from Rebels book
or otherwise. It is unreasonable to expect either the program or a human to
determine whether an opening line played by Rebel is specially created for Rebel
and therefore protected by copyright or is a line that is derivative of someone
elses work and is not.
Rebel itself does not provide this information. It uses other peoples work
without atribution. Moreover, the same argument can be applied to its use of
other peoples works in forming its book. If it is valid that it is a violation
of Rebels copyright to use lines from its book in other programs, then it is
also a violation of copyright when Rebel uses lines from other works too. You
can't have it both ways.
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