Chess book on YouTube

Hi,

How legal is to upload a video to YouTube where I read aloud a chess book and show its variations on the screen while I comment and play over them?

Is there a way to make it without breaking any copyright?

If that were a legal way to avoid copyright, don't you think that every book would be performed that way?

However, a book review, where you give your opinion on a book and read and perhaps demonstrate a small section to illustrate your opinion, would probably be fair use.

You don't want to have to deal with Silman's lawyers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLrNC9Rskww&list=PLW-ubDuosu7UKDXI6KF7XIMdzaStaVEIL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVfqEMPayW8&list=PLX7vUEJ2f0VzABumpne3ytowWTn2dP53c

You should mention that your links go to a reading of the book "My System" by Nimzovich, which was published in 1925 and is probably out of copyright, and a discussion by a 1700 of the games of "Zurich 1953" by Bronstein, which again wouldn't be a problem.

They both look very interesting.

Well, so you're saying discussing a book is alright? Or only for low rated players?

I think discussion of a book would always be okay, no matter who did it. It is original content.

Reading entire sections of a recent book, word for word, or close to word for word, would not be okay.

In the first link you posted, a reading of "My System",  the book is 90 years old and is probably out of copyright in most of the world.  That video link has been up since 2012, certainly long enough for anyone to make a protest to Youtube if they wanted.

you should ask TheBackyardProfessor...he seems to have experience with this

That's what the Backyard professor did. However, he read only small passages, and missed the important ones. Then he added his own ideas.

Any lawsuit against him would not be for copyright violations, but rather for libel or slander. Jeremy Silman did not say some of the outrageous things BYP credits him for.

If you read a book online in any form, and read it fully and accurately, you are violating copyright. As I understand it, and you can read this in the copyright statements of many books, you may quote short passages and offer your own assessments.

In a sense, that's actually what BYP did.

I have been making videos on my YouTube Channel which follow various books. I don't do any reading from the books though. I analyze the games on my own and provide my own commentary which is of course informed by the authors comments, but a lot of it is my own thoughts.

Here is an example from Baburin's Winning Pawn Structures: Winning Pawn Structures #9 Keene vs Miles Semi Tarrasch

You can check out the rest of my video at my channel HERE.

Thank you all for your ideas, I find them very useful.

I was maybe thinking on going through a tactics book, so I guess in that case there would be no problem because there's no text

You cannot copyright a chess position. But, I believe, you can copyright a peculiar assembly of chess positions as well as analysis of those positions.

I'm no lawyer, but that's essentially what lawyers have said in similar discussions.

YouTube is not a school. The US Supreme Court ruled that educational fair use does not shield photocopying done for instructors at Kinkos (now FedEx). How do you think the notion applies to YouTube?

Teachers and researchers are told that if you extract more than 10% of a work, or a full chapter, then you need the publisher's permission.

Again, I want to emphasize that I am not a lawyer. I have dealt with copyright issues as a teacher for more than twenty-five years. I have secured permission from writers and publishers to redistribute their work to hundreds of students. I have paid copyright fees in some instances. I have been harrassed by a publisher that sent me permission, required payment, received the payment from Kinkos and thought that I still owed the money.

The subject of copyright vs. internet share has become very, very interesting over the past years. The growing number of ways to share content makes it growingly difficult to control.

Regarding music, YouTube has found a nice solution. If your video contains a copyrighted song/songs, then a notification is sent to the owners of the audio. They can ban your video if they wish, but they also have the right to introduce announcements in your video, for their benefit. So, your video becomes another business for the company, making everybody happy.

I also recommend this very interesting video which adresses the topic of "illegal numbers". That is, numbers that can be decoded into other type of data, which would be illegal to distribute in the first place. So, for example, if you take every pixel in the Mona Lisa and you convert every color into a number, then distributing the resulting number would be illegal, which is ridiculous. So, it is quite paradoxical.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo19Y4tw0l8 

How about if i used the game examples in the book and discuss it as i understood it without saying whta book the game came from. Will this be legal?

Courts have ruled that games are not protected by copyright. Annotations are.