Plagiarism Question

Hi there.  I have been taking games and puzzles out of chess books and turning them into puzzles on the computer.  It makes them easy to scroll through and revisit.  If I post these to a blog on the site, is that plagiarism?  In general, chess games seem like public domain.  What about puzzles?

What Anthony said, but with more emphasis, especially with puzzles, you should try to acknowledge the composer. There should not be any possibility that anybody could think you claim the work as your own.

If you do that, you can post whatever you like

Thanks.  I'll forge ahead.

Are you guys sure this is OK?  I'd imagine all of those books have a copyright, and while you're unlikely to face any repercussions (on the outside, a demand to remove the content), it's probably a good idea to take the spirit of that copyright into consideration.

You are, after all, posting content for free that someone else composed and put in a book with the intention of making some money....

may help what?

True, which is why I was wondering.  On the other hand, what I'm really trying to do is take a real game that was played and put it into a format where it is now on a computer and the user has the ability to push a forward button and view the moves.  Most of these games are real games, and I don't suppose they are copy righted.  

Also it is probably damn good advertising for these books, which include much more analysis and many more puzzles.  

i thank you for having integrity, and taking action to avoid plagarism.

good man.

Copying analysis or annotation would be plagiarism, but the games and puzzles are not.

I am not sure what the rules are concerning a composition/puzzel, but when it comes to an actual game you may use any game by any player that you like.  What CAN be protected is any analysis or commentary, but simply using the moves of a particular game is like reporting the score of a football game, it is public domain information.

I honestly don't see how taking someone's composed puzzle out of a book would be anything but but plagarism.  Note the composed part.  A puzzle coming from a game would be a bit trickier, but you could easily argue that someone has taken the time and effort to scan the games, pull out good snippets, analyze them for better moves (and perhaps edit, if needed to limit solutions), and then publish them, therefore, they should have the right to allow or disallow someone to post them for free.  

Edit:  i am surprised that no one from chess.com has spoken up since it seems as though they could be liable if someone posts copyrighted material on the site. 

A game is "composed" as well, created by the intellect of the two players, yet this is not considered plagiarism. On this I judge puzzles to be equally fair game, although I suppose there is room for doubt.

Ivan, it is valid to say that a game is composed, it seems that they are perfomred for FIDE or whomever, who says that those are not copyrighted. 

However, it seems to me that sitting down with the chess pieces and a board to come up with a puzzle is no different than sitting down with a bunch of words and a sheet of paper to write a story. You have put together original creative content, and it is yours, and likely to have been copyrighted with the book. 

As for the puzzles from games , here is something that seems analgous to me.  In knitting, there are stitch patterns (ribs, cables, and whatnot) that form simple designs.  These themselves (perhaps like a chess game) are not copyrightable.  But, if you use those stitch patterns to make a sweater you can copyright the sweater.  I have no idea if this applies to puzzles at all because creative copyright it difficult to understand.  But it does seem like a logical step to me. 

If any doubt, contact the publisher or author and ask their permission. I do believe copyright law does allow the use of portions of copywritten works (google search "Copyright fair use clause"), but it has been a really long time since I looks that stuff up.

I think a lot of it comes from your presentation of the material, and also the source (real game or composition). I have been studying an endgame book and was thinking about about making annotated pgn files with the solutions that I worked out between myself and Fritz. Once I got to thinking on it more, although the positions are all from actual otb games and the solutions would be from fritz and my own brain, it just felt to me like I would be stealing if I were to present the positions in the same order that they appeared in the copywritten work that I was getting them from.  You might try contacting IM Silman or Billwall as both have extensive experience in book production and may have more insight into this matter or be able to direct you to book people in the know.

thanks

Why are you going around all over the forums replying to posts that are years old? You've been doing this nonstop for a couple of days now. 

I think you're right. It is plagiarism if it's from a non-public domain book AND if the position or game is not from some publicly available game between, for example, Carlsen and Karjakin, Alekhine and Capablanca, etc and you're not incorporating the non-public domain book's annotations.  in other words, the puzzle of game must be something created specifically for the non-public domain book.

Generally small quoted sections from such a book are allowed as long as you acknowledge the book and author.  I've posted a few such quotes from opening books, etc. here and my guess is if any authors are aware of it, they're glad for the publicity.