Who owns game records? Are they "ownable"? Aren't those are all over the place? My version of SmartGo program just came with 45 thousand games in it! Do I own these games, because they exist in my hard drive? If not, how can there be someone's property without their knowledge?

This has been discussed here and on GD many times. It has to do with the actual organization of records, which is, indeed, copyrightable.

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

- What gives someone a right to copyright something?


Person1 -> creates thing 1

Person2 -> creates thing 2 -> copyrights it

thing 1 = thing 2
Person1 is a violator, because he created something without someone else's permission.

Apparently copyright defies all logic and common sense.

The answer to your question differs by country.

In the USA your example is incorrect.

If you really want to know more then this is a good place to start --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

SL also has some info:
http://senseis.xmp.net/?KifuCopyrightDiscussion
http://senseis.xmp.net/?path=CopyrightA ... Discussion
http://senseis.xmp.net/?JapaneseCopyrightLaw

That's actually how patents work (though it's not quite that simple). You don't technically need to "copyright" anything any more; it is an automatic process. (At least in the US.) However, you may be asked to prove anteriority if a dispute arises. So many authors register works with different groups for such proof if it becomes necessary.

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_copyright

Philosophy of copyright is another great page for this discussion. I think historical games are closer to "discovery" or "fact" than they are to "invention", because the one who has the record didn't likely play the game himself. Former cannot be patented, latter can.

True, the games are more or less "discovered" and not "created", and therefore not copyrightable (in US and European law, in Asia this may be different).

But the thing that's protected by copyright is not the game itself, but the database of games. The database of games is "created" by someone. That's "creative work". So using an individual game out of the database is legal, but just taking the whole database and importing it into yours is not.

I'd be curious to see what you guys think of http://gokifu.com, where anyone can upload a game record. Should they be held responsible if users submit games that are from commercial databases?

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"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

They could add a "report" button just like youtube. But I don't know how to check if a report is valid...
And of course it's unclear if individual games are protected by copyright at all. In particular this might depend on the presence of commentary on the game.
It might be a wise decision to buy some commercial databases and create a blacklist out of them.

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Sanity is for the weak.

So games are not creative work, but game collections are. Copyright law is not at all ridiculous or misguided.

So far in Asia meaning Korea, Japan and China game records are not copyrightable. There was a fight even over this. Lee Sedol wanting to copyright his games for commercial purposes but Hankuk Kiwon objected and prevailed in this.

Complete game databases might be copyrightable but what about someone collecting all games manually somehow and adding them? In the end he would reach a high amount of similarity between the databases which to me seems perfectly legal. But it seems we will not get a clear judgement on these matters for quite some time.

In my personal opinion game records should not be copyrightable and only commentary should be copyrightable in these cases.

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Human beings cannot stop doing what they really desire to do. ; Amamiya-sensei
Updated revised and continued Blog with Pro games commented and info about studying abroad: http://beginningpath.blogspot.com/

It seems like databases like GoGoD are not protected by copyright itself, but by special database-rights. These allow the reproduction of insubstantial amounts from the database. So a website where users can upload single games (like gokifu.com) should be fine, but websites like sgfdatabase which reproduce almost all games from the database violates these rights. (This applies in the EU).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_D ... eris_right

Then there is the unrelated question of copyright for single games. If individual uncommented games are protected by copyright then gokifu.com would need to remove them. But in that case GoGoD itself would probably be illegal too. Personally I agree with adoreme that plain gamerecords shouldn't be protected, but commentary should be protected.

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Sanity is for the weak.

I'd also add that whatever the copyright issues, I think the prosocial case for respecting the work of TMark and John is quite strong. I do not know what kind of revenue they receive for GoGoD, but presumably it helps facilitate their scholarly and historical work, and of course it compensates them for their labor in producing GoGoD. Both of these aspects do a substantial service to the Go community. They've even allowed others to do creative work using their database (ProGoR, dailyjoseki). Leaving legality aside, I would not act to undermine their work.

Compete against them or try to provide a better product if you want to, but don't just take their work and try to profit from it. My belief is that doing so would just lead to a race to the bottom, where serious investments of time like theirs would be discouraged.

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Occupy Babel!

- Whose creative work it is, when someone takes a database and adds another half to it? Also game collections consist of individual games...



- Did that site make profit of another person's work? No, it did not. Using their own server resources to provide a free service for public interest, I'd say they were doing a good deed. Just like hundreds of other sites that help to make this marginal sport more popular here in west.

Whenever databases are mentioned, copyright follows close behind, propelled by much hot air. However, careful readers will have noticed that we at GoGoD do not mention copyright much. That is not to say we do not regard it as an important topic, and we certainly do reserve any rights we have in that regard.

But it is a murky topic. For example, while we consider the "copyright is theft" delusion as part of growing up but one that generally is cured by time, we can equally recognise that parts of copyright law are absurd. For example, it is hard to see any sane reason to extend copyright more than, say, five or ten years beyond the death of an author.

There is also room for debate even between both these extremes. However, it is probably a fruitless debate for most of us, as next to none of us are lawyers. Apart from the fact that most of us lack even a basic understanding of the law, there are probably differences between east and west, or different countries in the west, and there is little prior practice to call on. As far as go in the west is concerned, there have been a little over half a dozen cases of serious copyright claims that we know about (but GoGoD has not been involved), a couple of which went to court. Apart from one unknown case where the result was kept confidential, the copyright aspect seems to have been upheld in each case, but that is hardly enough to establish case law, and not all cases were about databases anyway.

So copyright is not the main plank of our approach. We rely instead on the fair-mindedness of the go community. We have explained this before, but there are always new players coming along, so it probably bears repeating.

First, we respect the feelings of the professional go associations. We recognise that, irrespective of what the law might say, game records are very important to them. This is especially so in Japan, where much of the sponsorship is from newspapers. All the newspaper gets out of this is the right to publish games. In practice, what counts most is the right to publish first, and even the professional organisations themselves will often delay publication until a newspaper has published first. There are also professionals and others who individually take a strong view on whether a game belongs to a player. People like Yoda Norimoto, Takagi Shoichi, Yi Se-tol and Go Seigen’s manager have actually spoken up on copyright issues.

Broadly speaking, the stance in Japan (still the main source) is that, as regards modern games, a pro may freely quote his own games in books, and the organisations may use any game eventually. Outsiders, however, will tend to quote only partial records (e.g. moves 1-100, or an unnumbered position from a game). This is an indirect way of respecting the pros’ feelings.

With that background, to us it is irrelevant that we may have the law on our side. We owe so much to these organisations for the massive goodwill and tangible help they have given in the past, and may continue to give, that we cannot afford to risk annoying them. There are already elements within the various organisations that have become disillusioned with western players – this covers a range of things such as harping on about rules or the behaviour of some inseis – and so we cannot take future help for granted.

Our approach therefore has been to address the various organisations in person, and to explain what we do. Essentially this is: promoting go in the west. We have been fortunate in securing cooperation, though not without some extra effort in one case. We have not so much asked for permission as for tolerance. In other words, they can stop tolerating whenever they want and we stop. Further, we supply free copies of every issue, so that they know exactly what we are up to. Finally, we do not market in any of the Asian countries. This is, apparently, a very important point to them. I also think that their tolerance has been based on knowledge from their own markets that databases are not really in much demand, so they know we are not going to make much out of it.

We have also had to make a decision how to present the database. We agreed from the beginning that it would not be encrypted, nor would we put in artificial markers such as adding a couple of moves to games – tactics that other databases have used. It was T Mark’s view, and I allowed myself to be persuaded, that go players in general could be trusted. That has proved to be a wise view.

Further, we do not hide our data away. We have always freely given permission to companies, universities and individuals who wish to use the data in some creative way to research or promote go. In addition, we allow go associations and clubs to buy heavily discounted licences for their members. So far we have had only one bad experience out of a couple of dozen examples.

As regards the actual compilation of the database, we have always accepted contributions from others, but we have also striven wherever possible to buy, or at least see, written sources for ourselves. This is partly to support those who produce the written sources, of course, but our main concern is accuracy. As we have remarked many times before, there are often conflicting or unreliable records, and internet ones are especially unreliable. We also back the database up with an encyclopaedia that presents biographies and tournament records. The upshot of that approach over the years is that we have input most of the data ourselves (though T Mark has done the vast majority of the transcribing) and checked the rest, and we have together spent a small fortune on books, magazines and newspapers. A set of collected games can cost $1500, a yearbook $60, an airmail annual subscription to one magazine $250. That is without mentioning things like travel.

We do therefore sell GoGoD. Not to get rich, but simply to defray a small fraction of these costs.

We never cost our time. That is given in vast amounts (essentially, nowadays, a full working day, most days). Consider that transcribing one game takes 20 minutes to one hour. Checking a game can take almost as long. And we have 65,000. We have done this for seventeen years.

What we hope for is simply that other go players will respect that huge investment of money and time (and knowledge) and not destroy the fruits of our work like a plague of locusts by republishing our records on their own sites or copying them to other sources.

Note that when we say "our records", we obviously do not mean that we own the games. Anyone can buy the sources and transcribe them themselves. What we do own are the grey hairs and repetitive strain injuries from the efforts invested in creating our collection.

It is interesting that the site mentioned above appears to have suddenly added password protection since we asked the owner to explain why he used GoGoD records. That seems to imply he or someone he knows has read this forum. So, we ask him again, please explain why. If he doesn’t think our efforts merit respect, he may also explain that, too.

Fortunately, as mentioned above, the overwhelming majority of go players do seem to empathise with our situation, and them we thank sincerely, as ever, and from them we continue to draw inspiration.

For GoGoD (with T Mark Hall)

Excellent post as always, John. There were a couple of paragraphs where I was puzzled.



- You draw a metaphor of fruit-destroying locust and compare that to copying a database. However, copying doesn't destroy the original work. Better comparison point would be fertilizer in that it multiplies the product. If swarms of locust would multiply grain, it would bring cost of grain to rock bottom. It would also cure famine in the world. People would ask: "why should we farm grain?". Not for money they wouldn't. Why would anyone need money if utopian society of abundance was possible? Because it isn't possible with tangible goods, we have things like copyright laws to turn some people into millionaires.

On unrelated anecdote, our local millionaire wondered aloud why government gives benefits to drug-addicted single mothers. He thought this would encourage youth to become drug-addicted single mothers, because for him money represents incentive.

I do respect your work John and I have no intention to rip, steal or copy any of it.



- This was another paragraph where I thought you were either angry or joking. Re-inventing the wheel is often considered activity that is unnecessary. Thus even copyright law recognizes that there are certain public interests that outweight unrestricted rights to prevent free flow of information, such as scholarship and archiving (link).

After reading what John wrote about how he and TMark have gone about creating the database, it seems apparent that the question is not just about fertilizing the database so that it might multiply freely and joyfully throughout the west, but also the effect of the growth on those responsible that the information continues to flow.

First of all, this could include Asian professionals and organizations who have "tolerated" GoGoD and might be displeased to find that their generous offerings to the West have made it back to Asia via the internet. Then there are John and Tmark themselves, who have obvious reason to be displeased if their product which they have been working on for 17 years is being given away free. All copyright theory aside - do we want to give these people cause to be disgruntled?

If locusts are not an apt metaphor, how about mosquitoes?

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Patience, grasshopper.

I am not sure why you said 'destroy' here. The work you have done will live on, hundreds of GoGoD CDs were sold, I assume, maybe thousands, all this will persist and not simply disappear. I assume you mean that if the sales of the CDs fall below some specific level you and TMark will be unable to continue your work and the database will not grow anymore - which is reasonable, but its not 'destruction'.

On another note>
Just for clarification - how does the website in question work? Can people simply download the whole database? Or is it more like GoBase.org - you can view a game or two, but that's it? I have not visited the site (and have no intention to) - thus I ask here.

PS>
I see is a slight moral issue on both sides, I guess. Over the years, I have purchased many pieces of Asian Go literature, Kido yearbooks, game collections, fuseki dictionaries, and whatnot - have a full shelf of that stuff at home, was a small fortune. If I had purchased GoGod, I would not buy all this other stuff, would I? And thus all the other publishers would lose my business. Multiply that by the number of all people who already bought GoGoD and I am sure that the cumulative impact is not trivial, even though to the Asian publishers might be negligible... for now. I guess this is why they insist you do not distribute in Asia. But what about any potential western publishers who could do something but instead thing 'eh, why bother, people will just buy GoGoD and I will lose money'.

It is difficult to predict what is really good for Go in the West. Is a commercial database with 50K+ games better than a free one with 20K+ games? For the average player (average beginner?) - would it make any difference? Would it be better to have a free database of most recent games, or a commercial one including also many historical games? Is there room for both?

I am not sure what it all means, or even how I feel about that.
Just some thoughts, that's all.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Toge, if you look at the bottom of that sgfdatabase page, you will note links concerning forex, casinos and similar topics. This black hat SEO, selling irrelevant links for money in order to benefit the recipients' placement in search engines. I do not know the actual amount of money made, but it is commercial activity, of a relatively unethical kind.

Were this not L19x19, I would have expressed that much more forcefully...

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Occupy Babel!

Bantari - you're comparing apples and potatoes. If the included games is only reason that you or anyone else has to buy all those Asian go books and magazines, then indeed, GoGoD would have been a better deal. This of course is hardly the case. But while we're at it, GoGoD also offers significantly more than just the games, so for those who've been relying on "free" game records and those who have other sources of games as well, it's still worth making the relatively small investment.

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Patience, grasshopper.