Author: Andrew Williams
Date: 11:36:38 11/18/05
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On November 18, 2005 at 14:14:05, Greg Simpson wrote: >I think that there have been rulings that mere compilations of public data don't >qualify for copyright protections, but I don't think opening books would fall >under that. > I think it depends on whether it's just a collection of games (not subject to copyright - see below) or a selection of moves which someone has constructed to try to give advantage to a particular chess program. I think it's possible to construct an argument whereby the latter is not the same as the former. Therefore, it's at least arguable that the latter should be subject to copyright. I think that the whole issue is clouded somewhat by the fact that there's confusion about what we mean when we say, "opening book"; to take my program as an example, it has a "big book", which is made from a collection of games and a "preferred book", which consists of lines which are entered by hand. >I wonder if many of us are violating copyright just by posting games or pgn >files. Do the players, or tournament organizers or somebody own the copyright >for those? I think it's been established that game scores (ie the moves in chess games) cannot be copyrighted, so we're OK as far as posting games or PGN files. To make things worse, I think the position changes if a game has comments in it, although not the sorts of comments emitted by chess programs, but the sort that people have written. I hope that clears everything up. :-) Andrew
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