For the copyright issue.

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长考出臭棋.

Most of the blocked content seems to be in the intermediate part. Good luck for me that I have just finished that.

You arrange some stones on Goban.
You become an owner of that arrangement.
He who creates same arrangement of stones can be sued.

Ridiculous!
I'm my opinion there should be no victimless crimes.

"Victimless"? How about the Korean pro player who composed the problem and included it in a book he wrote to sell and make a living now that there are no game fees in Korean tournaments? Or maybe you are one of those who believe that intellectual property shouldn't be protected? Without that protection why should I bother to write books, compose music, compose go problems, or translate go books from Korean to English?

- What does tournament fees have to do with anything? He's still selling the book with those problems. Is there a problem?



- There is no "property" that is an idea or arrangement. Piece of music has a composer, but you can't put copyright on sound waves. Who knows if someone composed exact same piece? In literature it's the same thing. Writers borrow things from other writers all the time. Wisdom is very much collective, and often credits go to those historical people who compile works of others in one sellable package - like a book. You can steal a book (which is wrong!), but you can't steal the content of that book.

"Why should I" is not really an argument. Why should I get out of the bed if breakfast isn't ready? Good laws are not based on anyone's whims.

Love.

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19/02/2011: this grumpy person takes a voluntary holiday from L19.

gowan: If a person is against the copyright of specific things, that does not imply that that same person is against creators being given some compensation.

Not every act of creation deserves to grant its creator a steady income. It's great that someone constructed a go problem, but I would argue that it is the collection, the book, which deserves the copyright.

This is not like a song, (it would be awfully hard to reproduce a full symphony orchestra for a friend, (short of some digital ripping)) this is something which you could reproduce exactly for a friend. All you need is a board.

It's simply not feasible to try to control this kind of information.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

In copyright discussions it's important to distinguish theory and practice.

Theory: Copyright law prevents illegal distribution of go books.
Practice: It's trivial to find pirated go books online.

Theory: If it were easy to find pirated go books, nobody would bother to publish new ones.
Practice: It's trivial to find pirated go books online, yet new books get published all the time.

Theory: Without copyright law, authors would have no way to protect their content.
Practice: Not only there are other ways to protect content, such as DRM, but people already rely on them despite the copyright law being there.

Theory: Without being paid by a publisher, nobody would create tsumego collections. (Individual tsumego are not copyrightable, collections are.)
Practice: Apparently, as mentioned on GoChild forums, someone is doing it right now, so the problems are ultimately safe

- Books turned into website. That's two entirely different media. Where did you get this "author will get nothing" -thing? Of course books will sell if there's demand for them. Means of recording have been around for ages and economy is just continuing to grow exponentially.

That kind of thinking comes from those who have established themselves monopoly in certain business. Perfect example is record industry. The only legitimate form of music is a fragile and expensive Compact Disk. That, and festivals where recording is prohibited. Everything else is "piracy that is bringing down this industry". If copyright law held one bit of its original spirit and intention, I'd understand your points.

Computers and Internet have dramatically changed the way information is stored and transferred. Old copyright thinking just doesn't apply well in today's world. Have you seen YouTube videos where soundtrack is disabled because it "didn't belong" to that video's author? Given how many hours of user-created content is uploaded to that site every minute and how many other video sharing sites there are, companies need to hire some serious people to go over every teenager's fan video soundtracks. I wonder what train of thought drives them to do this. "You didn't hear it! This tune isn't stuck in your head or anything! Meanwhile if you want to hear this tune, come visit our shop"
Tilting at windmills much!

While I agree that taking a series of problems out of a book and copying them en masse is wrong, I find it ludicrous that go problems can be copyrighted. This isn't like writing a song where virtually anything might be created and the chances of someone else exactly duplicating your song by random chance are infinitesimally low. There is a finite number of possible go positions that might be created as puzzles, many of which will arise naturally in the course of games. Doubtless most of these have occurred in previous games.

Does the first person to ever publish 'hane at the head of two stones' own the rights to that move? Can they sue to prevent that from being used in every introductory book written?

Ideas should not be copyrightable, only the particular expression of those ideas.

Thunkd: I do not believe it is possible to copyright a single go problem. If someone is asserting copyright over a single problem, and that is why GoChild is blocking packs, that is copyright abuse, and not really germane to the general discussion of copyright in Go.

I really wish I could not just mark this thread as read, but make it so that I simply cannot see it when I visit L19x19.

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Occupy Babel!