Author: Steven Edwards
Date: 00:34:30 07/05/05
Some ethics questions: According to an article appearing in a 1992 issue of _Computer Chess Reports_, the now defunct computer chess dedicated unit manufacturer Fidelity Electronics engaged in rating fraud at a major USCF tournament in 1985. The company entered specially adapted units running at 8 MHz to gain an established rating while at the same time selling a same named model with an identical external appearance that internally had only a 3 MHz CPU. The ruse was discovered by an observer and not revealed by the company. In a resulting adverting fracas among Fidelity, Your Move, and the USCF, Fidelity sued Your Move, lost, and soon after went bankrupt. While I believe the above to be true, I have sometimes wondered about some unanswered questions: 1. Did the responsible person(s) at Fidelity believe that the fraud would go undetected once the game scores and time control data from the tournament became public? Surely at least some of the purchasers of the commercial 3 MHz unit would try to rerun the tournament games and detect a difference. 2. Is it reasonable to believe that the programmer(s) at Fidelity were unaware of the ruse beforehand? 3. Wouldn't at least some of the hardware staff have to be involved? 4. Supposedly, the USCF at some time shortly after the tournament became aware of the details. Yet I can't recall the USCF via _Chess Life_ ever saying anything about the processor speed bait-and-switch. For that matter, I've never read any official USCF editorial matter critical of Fidelity, or any other company that advertises in _Chess Life_ or whose products are prominently featured in the USCF catalog. Does the USCF care more about its advertisers than its members? 5. What would you have done if you worked for such a company, or if you had helped run the USCF?
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