Strongly agree that I don't see any rational argument about why a book should enjoy different legal treatment than a game record.

I'm trying to figure out what difference it makes. Fair use only applies to the very smallest reproduction of a work unless intended for educational use only, and only in the United States. It would have to go to court to really find out...

There is that infamous old cho chikun.pdf floating around, many people download that with the justification that the solutions aren't included so it is fair use, but that is probably not true. Its pretty clear that the solutions are easy to create, it is the problems that take a long time to formulate.

There are very few books that only use game records or are a collection of game records. The only one that I have in my collection is played by the the two authors for the express purpose of demonstrating their points. They originally created that game.



If you want to argue semantics, please do so in PM with me, instead of crapping up the thread with posts like that.

Nearly all problems aimed at beginners are as old as the hills, and not under copyright. (And in the U. S. problems are not copyrightable.) There may be a question about compilation copyright, but, IMX, ordinary people do not care much about that kind of copyright.

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There are sooo many interesting points in this thread that I would love to comment on. But I don't have time.

Until I do, I'll just point out something about "fair use": there are some fairly clear examples of what constitutes "fair use." But outside those clear situations, no one really knows exactly what constitutes "fair use." And, as badukjr suggested, a court would have to decide, which would involve litigation, which is expensive. Furthermore, because the boundaries of fair use aren't clear, if someone wants to litigate the issue (bring it to court), they run a significant risk of losing. So even parties that can afford to pay for litigation involving fair use arguments generally avoid doing so. And without court decisions (especially higher courts), and without further legislation, the issue remains unclear (which in turn means less litigation, and the cycle continues).

I'm not saying this supports or undermines any particular argument, but just noting a practical point.

This is a widely discussed and debated topic. Much of the legal analysis on this issue in the U.S. is found in a lawsuit about a phone book - Feist v. Rural. The "work" that goes into creation is only part of the analysis. I believe compilations of go games are generally copyrightable under U.S. law, but I admit the issue probably isn't clear, and it also depends on what is included in the compilation. For example, GoGoD isn't just a collection of SGFs made by a bot crawling on the internet--there are some comments, historical notes, notes about the game record, players, etc. (and, yes, within the database portion of the collection itself, and not just the encyclopedia section). All of which makes it more likely subject to copyright.

I don't have time right now to explain whether I think this is right or wrong from a moral or policy standpoint.

A book is written with an expectation of income from future sales. This isn't the case with a game record.

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Not sure if that's a reason for different legal treatment or merely its consequence. Why shouldn't professional go players except income from reproductions of their games?

No bearing on morality of the action. Kidnapping a West African and kidnapping a West Virginian at one point was treated differently by the law. Both actions were equally immoral. On the other hand, criticizing the king at one point was illegal, while criticizing your neighbor was not. Yet, neither action was immoral (on the other hand, jailing or fining a person for criticizing a king was).

No, this is erroneous.

Improvement (and maintenance) in living can happen without the law, as long as nobody is interfering with anybody’s rights. When one does, the law interferes. But it is erroneous to say that the law itself drives the civilization forward.

Furthermore, the law does not create rights, it recognizes them. When it recognizes the rights that do not exist, the particular law is not a real law, it is a legal fiction. Legal fiction leads to violation of other people’s rights when it is enforced. (For instance, right of a husband to relations with his wife is a legal fiction that has been in place in most civilized countries until very recently. In the UK, until early 90s. In the US, until 70s, I think. Its enforcement led to marital rape.)


First, I suppose the US government will forgive me the fine if I refuse to pay it? At no point will there be any men in uniform coming and enforcing the fine one way or another?
Second, so, when the owners of Rapidshare are imprisoned because of a legal fiction, that is not a case of force being applied to someone immorally?

Yes, protection from violence is the only reason I want to see for violence being applied to another human being. Call me old-fashioned.


Well, if I am good, I will have good sales. But my point is: I am violating nobody’s rights if I do that.


A statement you have not justified in any way. Intellectual property is the physical property on which information is stored. You certainly can own that. And I certainly may not steal that. But once I copy information onto my storage device (be it my brain or my hard drive), you cannot own that information, since you cannot own that device.

Unless you believe that "information" exists in some imaginary Platonic realm. In that case, a) you have to prove its existence, b) you still cannot justify my restriction to its use, since it is non-scarce.


Huh? You own the money in your customers’ pockets that they may pay you in future if they decide to buy your product? Doesn’t this contradict their own ownership of that money before the sale has happened? In case you are wondering, yes, I am serious. I don’t think you can own other people’s money before they gave it to you willingly.

No, but justifying violating individuals’ rights for the "improvement of society" (utilitarian approach to morality) leads to gross violation of human rights seen in Germany, US, Japan, USSR, and other countries in the 1930s.

I wrote this message with an expectation that you will pay me money for it. Can I PM you my Paypal account?

Seriously, as I said, you cannot have a claim on somebody else’s future custom. If I do something that will reduce or eliminate the custom you receive (e.g., by opening a store next to yours, or even online), I have no violated your rights.

First, there is no call for ad hominem attacks. I have not insulted anyone. I know my ideas may sound alien to people who are used to the concept of copyright, but that does not mean they are wrong. Abolitionism, rights to abortion, rights to free speech, rights not to recognize a certain person as a propher were (and are, in some places) considered crazy and alien at some point.

Second, I don’t disagree that book writers deserve to be paid for their work. They are free to sell their work to whomever will buy it and get payment. I am arguing that once information has been bought (in a form of a book, pdf, epub, whatever), its owner owns it completely and may put it up online for free distribution. He is not violating the original writers’ rights, since they do not own the information. Information is not something that can be owned, since it is not divorceable from the object that contains it (or the object whose emergent property it is), since it is the object that "creates" it. If you believe that information is a platonic object, a) you have to prove that platonic objects exist, b) you have to justify protection of access to them. (I can justify the protection of access to my pencil by its scarcity. But that does not apply to platonic objects.)

Otherwise, what you have is the system of goblin property ownership described in Harry Potter: even after a goblin sold something, he still owned it on some level. The concept of complete transfer of property did not exist in the goblin culture, just like complete transfer of intellectual property after a sale does not exist in the Western legal system.

Show me which products you have produced. For instance, I am considering supporting Haruki Murakami for his newest book, even though I can obtain it for free.

See this: http://c4sif.org/2011/08/innovation-in- ... ie-bundle/

There was really enough of this stuff on rec.games.go. We really don't need it here.

This elegantly proves that not every law is worth following. But you seem to be suggesting on that basis that the fact that an action is allowed/prohibited by law is never an independent reason for or against that action, aside from its morality. That's...a special sort of inference.

On another point, with game records, these feel somewhat in between a newspaper description of a sports match, which can't be prohibited by the broadcaster, and a video reproduction of the entire match, which can be.

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Well, one reason not to do something is because you're afraid of the cops. Another reason is that it's not nice. For instance, being rude to my wife is not illegal and doesn't violate her rights. (But I don't think the government should enforce being nice to people.)

What I am saying is that every application of law needs to be very strictly justified. You (i.e., the law, federal government, police, etc.) are coming in and telling a person what to do or not to do with his hard drive, with his house, with his car, with his body, etc. -- or else (you threaten with force and violence in the case of non-compliance to the law). You better have a good justification for doing that. One justification I see protection of other people from violation of their rights. In case when this does NOT apply, you're violating this person's rights needlessly. That is why the whole approach of "every law is moral unless proven otherwise" is wrong. Every law is immoral unless proven absolutely necessary to protect other people's rights. That is why people who hold to my point of view (which includes the Founding Fathers and approximately one Congressman today) hold to the idea of a limited government.

Why? Your further comments on this discuss other aspects but do not explain why.



Law can do either or both. E.g., property is not a human being's right per se (some rain forest civilisations are without this concept) but in most civilisations law has guaranteed the right (and often even put it in constitutions).



The justification comes with the law. In contrast to you, I can accept that law (not in contrast with human rights or dignity) regulates civilisations.



Right. It rquires a court's judgement to change ownership of your copy.



Once more: Scarcity is your but not my consideration.



No. "owning money" and "expecting to have income" are very different things.



Why do you make it sound so difficult? Of course! "owning money", "expecting to have income", "not being allowed to blackcopy without payment" are three very different things.

We understand that that is your preference and it does violate current copyright law.



Under valid copyright law, he is violating copyright and is (unless the copyright holder agrees) not allowed to distribute in a copy & paste manner.



Distribution of information can be copyright-protected regardless of whether the information itself can and cannot be owned. IOW, you may discuss the contents of a book and make proper citations but you may not distribute copies of the book (unless it is yours or the copyright owner has entitled you to do so).



Who cares. What matters is whether information is copyright-protected.



Who cares. What matters is whether information is copyright-protected.

You don't know? http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/books.html

This is an interesting thread. This is obviously a computer-centric forum, given the predominance of the "everything that can be reduced to a digital format should be freely available" crowd.

Maybe I am old, but to me piracy is simply thievery. The theft of the fruits of someone else's intellectual efforts. To me, intellectual property is still property, and it belongs to the person who created it.

There are a lot of bright people in this thread and elsewhere on the internet rationalizing this kind of theft. Nevertheless, I believe it is theft, pure and simple, and therefore morally wrong. All these pseudo-economic-inevitability mumbo jumbo arguments that clever schoolchildren can come up with won't change that. I particularly find the "it's for your own economic good" type of argument morally offensive. Who are you to decide what is for the author's own good?

I'm afraid I don't consider piracy any less thievery because you might later pay for something that you originally stole. Perhaps that makes you a thief capable of occasional remorse, but nevertheless a thief.

Sorry, I know this kind of opinion will be wildly unpopular here. Perhaps even get me banned from the forum. Frankly, I don't much care. Harsh statements of frankly held beliefs also sometimes have their place in civil discourse.

That's a different thing. When you buy a book, pdf etc. you are just supposed to use that information for your private purposes, not to redistribute it. Purchasing the right to redistribute or whatever you want to do with that information would probably be much more expensive for you, maybe a thousand to ten thousand times more than the right to just use it information for your private purposes.

I happen to have done some work in the area of copyright enforcement. My experience working with content producers (not RIAA, etc.) has led me to agree mostly with John on this matter. Sure, bad markets and small audiences hurt your ability to recoup your initial investment, but so does piracy. I would add that pirates sound political and idealistic, but once they sit across the table from an attorney their smugness evaporates pretty quickly. Whatever your thoughts and feelings are on the matter, I assure you (without offering legal advice) that U.S. copyright law is VERY pro-copyright holder.

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