Boylston Chess Club
This is a non-issue. Later in the thread, Chris Bird provided a reply from MonRoi confirming that the game scores are not copyrighted:
"The copyright disclaimer at the MonRoi's World Databank of Chess ("WDC") is for collection of data organized in a proprietary format- SQL database, and for live games; and not for copyrights of individual matches."
They explicitly say later:
"However, individual copyrights of games no one owns, as far as we know."
-Matt
This is certainly good to hear. Now I guess Stephen, Harold, Dylan, et. al. just need to educate the newspaper lawyers.
IANAL, but in Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service (1991) the Supreme Court ruled that "...the Constitution mandates originality as a prerequisite or copyright protection. The constitutional requirement necessitates independent creation plus a modicum of creativity. Since facts do not owe their origin to an act of authorship, they are not original and, thus, are not copyrightable."
Various treaties (WIPO?) or subsequent rulings might have increased protections to collections of facts (i.e.--databases) but I can't imagine anyone seriously asserting ownership of individual game scores.
Matt and Paul: thanks for the clarification.
In general, I believe that even IF chess game scores would be copyrightable, MonRoi would have to get the individual players to sign the copyright over to them - after all it is the players that create the game scores. At least that is the way it works for publishing articles: in most cases, authors have to sign a document giving the copyright to the publisher.
Regardless of copyright, I hope that Monroi are able to perform better than they currently doing at the European Chess Championships, where the production and viewing of game scores has been shambolic, unreliable and incomplete.
Welcome to USCF politics. Paul Truong called Monroi and fixed things up with them. Monroi's management is anxious to not cause any problems on this matter. - Further info from the USCF Forums.
BTW, Bill Goichberg, the President of the USCF and who is NOT running for election this year, has been posting some real interesting USCF background info on the forum of late. His latest is the state of USCF finances.
cool blog Jack, i like your vocab matchups.
Thank you, Ilya, I finally got permission from Bill Goichberg to post a recent statement of his. It is a fact-based summary of the USCF's accomplishments for the last several years. I'll be posting it tomorrow.
Those things suck anyway, they cost more than a pocket pc, and do less.
Monroi has been doing half the cheater's job for him, by broadcasting the game in real time onto the net. That means there's no camera or inputting of moves required for the cheat, just the broadcasting in of the reply by his accomplice. I mean, if high-scoring players at a tournament aren't even allowed to go to the bathroom without asking anymore, you'd think Monroi would be prohibited from doing this, wouldn't you?
There is an interview with the Monroi President, at the USCF Web site, by Jerry Hanken. If I was Hanken, I would have asked why the Monroi device costs $359. My Palm handlheld has more internal RAM, a kick-ass processor, great battery life, and costs less than half of what the Monroi costs. I like the idea of electronic scoresheets, but why do they need to be so expensive?
Howard Goldowsky
Paul,
I, too, would be more comfortable with the MonRoi if the posting live on the Internet was delayed by an hour or two. It is pricey, but better than a touch sensitive board.
Has anyone here used one yet?
I see above that Joe Bird corrected stated that Monroi could not claim copyright of chess game moves.
This is certainly true. Notes to games can be copyrighted but not the raw moves.
With my background in chess & mainstream media -- I can say that sometimes an outfit (like Monroi?) THINKS they can copyright raw moves, and will even contact non-chess publishers ( like newspapers) and for some vested interest; try to get them to not publish games.
The legal people in the mainstream media, often just do NOT know the copyright laws and court cases decided in this area. They think it is perhaps analogous to music notes that compose a song. Rather it is more analogous to the innings game score of a baseball game . . .non-copyrightable.
Regards, Daren Dillinger, CJA
A key Monroi spokesman is Jerry Hanken, President of the Chess Journalists of America
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