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What stops people from freely distributing existing chess game databases?

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Avatar of e4e5d4
e4e5d4
Jul 15, 2012
0
#41

Something I don't really get, although the answer is probably staring me in the face and I'm just being oblivious: What's the point of having a huge database of games along with software like CB or SCID to manage it? There's obviously a demand for them, but it doesn't seem like having a few million unannotated games on hand would be that useful -- for study, it's trivial to find free, online, annotated games, and that doesn't involve taking up how many gigabytes of hard disk drives. 

Avatar of blake78613
blake78613
Jul 15, 2012
0
#42
Kingpatzer wrote:
feygooner wrote:
joeydvivre wrote:

Translated into chess databases, I believe that I could take all the games of Morozevich from the ChessBase database and package them up and sell them as "Joey's collection of the games of Morozevich" and I would be okay because I didn't copy chessbase's entire collection.  Now if chessbase  had added something to Morozevich's games, like a fake game, I might be in trouble.  That's why mapmakers sometimes add bogus roads to their maps (bicyclists who rely heavily on maps sometimes get messed by this - "We were supposed to pass a road called "Memory Lane" - did anyone see "Memory Lane"? )

In the Feist v. Rural case, proving that you had copied all the raw information did not seem to do much good. From my understanding of this thread, selecting games of Morozevich would be enough of a "creative" act to enable you to copyright your collection of games.

This is a fun thread 

What about the copyright laws in countries besides the US?

I don't know about other nations. But the question of adding "something" to the database is an interesting one. 

If someone makes up a game and includes that game, then that is a purely creative work, and not a fact -- since it did not transpire in reality. In such a case, copying that "something" (be it a game that did not happen, or a coninuation that didn't happen but was rather analysis that wasn't played after a resignation for example), is clearly a violation of copyright because it is precisely not factual data. 

So there's an inherent obligation on someone publishing a new database to ensure that the games being provided are indeed factual games and not creative imagined games designed to "watermark" a database. 

Of course you would have to prove that they knew it was a creative work in order to sue them for stealing fiction.  Variations in analysis are in the public domain, even though the verbal language accompanying the analysis could be copyrighted.

Avatar of EnduringGuerila
EnduringGuerila
Jul 15, 2012
0
#43
Estragon wrote:
ChessSponge wrote:
Kingpatzer wrote:

A specific database represents a specific unique collection and thus is covered by copyright protections.

Even though someone else could notate those exact same games since the games themselves freely exist? Wouldn't taking two different databases and combining them together create a specific unique collection?

No, it would not.

You have to actually DO something different and unique to be able to claim a copyright.  Combining the copyrighted works of two others is just stealing from both of them.

There are plenty of sources of free games and databases already, and some of them are rather well groomed.  Why resort to theft?

Theft is defined as the action of stealing.  How exactly can a series of moves be stolen?  You can't own an idea.  Private property is a natural way of excluding others from possessions that are scarce.  But what exactly is the point of excluding others from an idea that can be replicated infinitely at no expense?

Intellectual property has no justification other than "I thought of it so everyone should pay me for it!"  which sounds like something my nine year old niece would say.

Avatar of DrFrank124c
DrFrank124c
Jul 15, 2012
0
#44
e4e5d4 wrote:

Something I don't really get, although the answer is probably staring me in the face and I'm just being oblivious: What's the point of having a huge database of games along with software like CB or SCID to manage it? There's obviously a demand for them, but it doesn't seem like having a few million unannotated games on hand would be that useful -- for study, it's trivial to find free, online, annotated games, and that doesn't involve taking up how many gigabytes of hard disk drives. 

When we analyze our own games it is helpful to see if the masters and gms made the same moves we did. Also if you are interested in specific opening variations you can go through the games of that variation that were played and this gives you an idea of the strategy and tactics involved in that variation.

Avatar of ozzie_c_cobblepot
NM ozzie_c_cobblepot
Jul 16, 2012
0
#45
frank124c wrote:
e4e5d4 wrote:

Something I don't really get, although the answer is probably staring me in the face and I'm just being oblivious: What's the point of having a huge database of games along with software like CB or SCID to manage it? There's obviously a demand for them, but it doesn't seem like having a few million unannotated games on hand would be that useful -- for study, it's trivial to find free, online, annotated games, and that doesn't involve taking up how many gigabytes of hard disk drives. 

When we analyze our own games it is helpful to see if the masters and gms made the same moves we did. Also if you are interested in specific opening variations you can go through the games of that variation that were played and this gives you an idea of the strategy and tactics involved in that variation.

My view is that the chess world is such a niche that there is no serious development towards a world which you describe. Just look at CB - it's so obvious that the original code has only been ported to windows 7, probably through windows 3.1/95/XP. It is really a terrible piece of software. They don't work on improvement; they work on new features.

The upside of having everything local to the machine is that you can still work without connectivity (airplane, hotels with crappy wifi), and that a bad connection will not be fatal, like when the wifi goes out when you have only 25 minutes to prepare for an opponent.

But this could all be worked around. The reason it's all local is, in a nutshell, inertia.