Fun fact about the first game : after 1.d4 Nf6, the World Champion played 2.Bg5, which is fairly rare at top level in classical time control, and pretty much unprecedented in world championships. Why is it fun? Because this opening is known as the Trompovsky, often nicknamed the "tromp". Magnus more or less admitted that it was a wink at the newly elected US president.

A lot of the comments here on copyright seem to be looking for answers to distinguish this from other copyright issues. Rather than summing up every copyright argument for or against, I thought I'd link to a fairly relevant case: Feist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....

Feist is a case where a phone book company stole the data in a phone book, and began reselling it. It deals with publication of facts, and is a situation where there's a reasonable public policy argument for incentivising the private company's work collection of phone number data. It's a commonly taught fundamental Copyright claim that is a great starting point for those interested in researching further.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Basketball_Ass%27n_v.....

> The district court held that Motorola and STATS did not infringe NBA's copyright because only facts from the broadcasts, not the broadcasts themselves were transmitted. The Second Circuit Court agreed with the district court's argument that the "[d]efendants provide purely factual information which any patron of an NBA game could acquire from the arena without any involvement from the director, cameramen, or others who contribute to the originality of the broadcast" [939 F. Supp. at 1094].

I think this is a more correct case to apply.

The Feist case was about the expense accrued in aggregating the information and the incentive issues that arise if those efforts are not protected.

The NBA case was about the division of rights between the competition organizer and those attempting to report on it. Specifically, are the reporters required to delay their reporting efforts when the only information being reported generated by the event is factual.

If I understand correctly, this ruling doesn't preclude the event organizers from banning all electronic communication devices from the premises. It just prevents them from pursuing any civil penalties from those that report on the event.

I wonder what the effect on attendance would be, if major sporting events had a "no cell phones" rule. My guess offhand: it would be devastating to ticket sales.

I've been trying to mull that out as well from an economic perspective but I think it's highly dependent on the existing distribution networks which adds additional complexity.

Major League sports information is disseminated fairly quickly and the attendance levels make technological prohibitions a challenge. The nature of world chess championships make it a little different, as long as the globally recognized top ranked players are in attendance (preventing an organizational schism) I think the organizers could do whatever they want.

In the end I think this ruling just means they can't enforce a civil penalty for violation of these rules, but there's no reason they can't expel the violator from their event.

It's an interesting case.

But then again, of most of the people going are hardcore fans, sales might not be affected to much (although there might be outrage)

PGA Tour banned cell phones until 2011: http://www.golf.com/ap-news/tour-allow-cell-phones-tournamen...

They stole the data!? What did the phone company do when it no longer had the data for their phone books?! ooooh, you mean they made a copy which the court ruled was ok to do.

Your post is good (but your link is broken, please go steal a better copypaste) and informative, but the point I'm making is that it's easier for people learning about this to see the underlying issues that courts grapple with if we stick to less loaded terms.

Your link doesn't work (HN ate the last period up). Here's a working link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R...

Thanks -- I edited my link to Feist from an hour ago to have the extra period, too.

At least in UK, I think that example is better classed as 'database right'

The UK is unusual in having database rights, most countries don't respect them to that extent.

All EU countries have it.

In the UK the assembly of facts is copyrighted, in the rest only the structure, design and any comments or similar.

So consider this near-future scenario:

You have a soccer match in which a lot of fans show up with cameras. Either like a Go-Pro or just their phones, or like Google Glasses.

From the many fan cams, you can reconstruct the state of the match. From the FIFA video games, or from image analysis, you have all the player likenesses.

So then someone could "watch" the game from any vantage point, using just the "facts" of the game, without doing an actual re-broadcast of the game.

What then?

I'm failing to see what's wrong with this. I also don't see how an organization like the NBA or FIFA or whoever can make a claim to "own" the events of a game.

The sale of exclusivity rights seems like the scam: The premise that one can copyright an event itself and not just a particular recording of it.

If someone is there and recording I say that should be OK. If another person aggregates the views of multiple such recorders then they would need to obtain permission from each.

Reconstructing the entirety of a game with virtual players is already legal and amounts to an original work. Where's the problem?

I'm not sure why this is down-voted. This what came to my mind first as well. I'm not a lawyer, so, maybe there is something fundamental that is wrong with the argument, but it would be nice if someone just explained instead of down-voting.

Seems to me that that is allowed (if you are allowed to bring cameras into the stadium).

Apropos, to anyone who wants to watch the live moves, with expert commentary, they are here (this is the defendant from the Reuters story):

https://chess24.com/en/read/news/chess24-win-moscow-case-ann...

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkTCNuQ2mGfW6-SpHpaze_g (direct link to livestream)

If you're looking for live computer engine lines, Steinar Gunderson offers that here, with 38 cores running Stockfish:

http://analysis.sesse.net/

As well as PGN files (live-updated):

http://pgn.sesse.net/

Regarding "38 cores": can anyone comment on whether that's sufficient to perfectly analyse the game in near-real-time, or is it just good enough to provide interesting analysis? I.e. would Stockfish running on 38 cores be competitive with / better than World Championship players?

modern chess programs are vastly superior to human players, regardless of one or 38 cores. stockfish has a elo rating of ~3350 (probably a little higher when running on 38 cores, not sure). carlsen has 2850. that corresponds with a 95% winning probability per game (or to be more precise: stockfish is expected to win 95% of all possible points over several chess matches)

it's hard to say if that's close to "perfect analysis", because we don't know what a perfect game will look like (chess is not a solved game). but compared to human level, one could say it's close to perfect.

I'm not saying Stockfish isn't stronger than any human player (even the world champion), but you can't compare ratings in two different systems like that. Magnus has never played a FIDE-rated game with Stockfish, nor has Stockfish played any rated games with a human opponent.

Even mobile phones have been at World Championship level for years, but there's no idea to know how close to perfection we are. Top computers still lose games to other top computers.

It's easy to tell computer engines aren't analyzing perfectly, because when we tell to them to play themselves, they lose a large fraction of their games, as both colors. Perfect play would always force at least a draw from at least one side.

There's no known tractable way to solve chess. There's something like 10^120 move orders [0], and no known way to find perfect play without brute-forcing (almost) all of them. Chess engines can't solve to to the end of a game to see which moves are certain to win; they can only explore to a very shallow depth, and evaluate the horizon nodes by very human-like [1] approximate heuristics.

It looks perfect from a human PoV (the best human players have no chance of winning); but there's still an unimaginably large gulf between chess engines and mathematically perfect chess.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number

[1] https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/...

Also useful, the highlights from the first game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y_h3eZQ-j0

In the past Daniel King and Christof Sielecki also each did really nice highlight videos, so I'm wondering if this'll discourage them this time.

Anybody have a link to the complaint/application for a TRO? A lot of the comments here are talking about copyright law, but most protection or attempted protection of data is done with licensing agreements. I would guess FIDE could require the people viewing in person and on the FIDE website to agree to not disseminate accounts of the game as a condition of being allowed to watch. I'd be interested to learn if FIDE has actually attempted to limit it this way, or if the debate is truly over copyright issues. And also if they did ask for the TRO on licensing grounds, was it because their licensing scheme was invalid, or just because the type of harm they were likely to suffer didn't rise to the level needed to qualify for injunctive relief.

I don't have that but the judge was pretty dismissive. From chessgames.com:

In a hearing late in the day prior to the first game of the match, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero was not persuaded that organizers of the $1 million, 12-game tournament had a legal right to block the websites from disclosing the moves until after each game.(7) Rejecting virtually every argument that World Chess asserted, he said, "I know this area of the law very well."

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?tid=88069&crosstable...

There are also more details mentioned in this Chess.com article: https://www.chess.com/news/carlsen-plays-white-in-round-one-...

Just for reference, footnote (7) in your quote is a link to http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/11/10/us/ap-us-world-ch... .

Docket: https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/19780738/World_Ches... Articles regarding initial filing: http://www.law360.com/articles/860896/world-chess-files-4-5m... http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/chess-lawsuit-set-moves-f...

Someone else with PACER access could easily obtain the order, but from the ABC article the argument is indeed that every visitor to the site agrees to not share the move information and therefore these other chess sites must have violated said agreement to obtain the move information. Chessgames's defense is that they don't get the data from the site, but instead from watching people on Twitter (there are multiple defendants though).

But FIDE is also broadcasting live, so even if they did try such a scheme, chess24 could just watch the livestream, get the moves, and make their own broadcast where they tell everyone else the moves.

> on the FIDE website to agree to not disseminate accounts of the game as a condition of being allowed to watch.

This is kinda off-topic here, but this might even be technically a violation of the CFAA! Orin Kerr from Volokh Conspiracy has written about it many times, but it's not a serious possibility I guess.

In broadcast and print media, there are "facts" which are routinely embargoed (they cannot be released before a certain date/time). Financial results from publicly-traded companies are similarly embargoed, even though they be simple facts. Why can't this mechanism be employed as a condition of being permitted to attend the event?

That is one of the mechanisms that they were relying on. Anyone attending the event and relaying moves is likely in breach of contract, and at least could be thrown out of the venue. Likewise, anyone who signed up for the official feed and then shared the moves is violating the website's terms and conditions and could get their account closed. But it only takes one anonymous user to sign up and report the moves to other sites.

Not necessarily.

Person A opens the stream on their PC.

Unknown to them, Person B watches that stream through the window of Person A’s home, and broadcasts the information.

The only possible crime Person B did was invading Person A’s privacy, but Person A does not sue them.

Person A acted entirely legal, so did Person B, and you still got all the facts out.

Embargoes aren't rooted in laws, though. There's nothing stopping a news outlet from breaking embargo other than the reprecussions from the other company, like not getting news early in the future.

Edit: Wow, I need some sleep. I misread the OP, and the Wikipedia article to which I linked. I'll keep the comment up for posterity, but, yes, the company itself can put limitations in place but it's incredibly difficult to enforce.

There might be a contractual matter, but news and financial results cannot be protected under copyright or unfair competition theories. Without reading the case I imagine the "free riding" allegation is an unfair competition claim. I wrote a paper on this if you're interested in learning more: http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent....

I think it's just because the event itself is being broadcast on some television or streaming channel.

So you can't legally prevent someone from watching the official stream, then making a broadcast where they discuss facts that are relayed on that stream.

>The defendants E-Learning Ltd and Logical Thinking Ltd, which operate website Chess24.com, had argued in court papers that World Chess was seeking to stop websites from reporting on information already in the public domain and not protected by copyright law.

You can't publicly broadcast facts. Then say no one else has the right to rebroadcast those same facts.

"Why can't this mechanism be employed as a condition of being permitted to attend the event?"

There might be an issue of legality concerning the embargo in which case the limitation is warranted.

The main difference between this and other sports/events is the moves are facts. They wouldn't be able to broadcast a live video feed. But you can copyright facts.

You can copyright a particular arrangement of facts (or other non-copyright protected content) where that arrangement required creative thought (even if "arrangement" is just layout as simple as page numbers/breaks).

Notes are facts, but sheet music (and other representations) of sequence of notes, aka a song, are copyrightable. Why are a sequence of moves not the same?

This ruling seems more about biases people have about art (music) and sport/game (chess) than about copyright law.

So what is the difference between two people playing chess and two people jamming (musical improv)? Both have limited moves, rules, structure, the creative input from two people. The chess moves are not copyrightable but the song notes are?

I actually think neither should be.

No, you can't copy facts, period.

You can copyright facts that have been 'fixed in a tangible medium of expression' as long as there's some minimal element of creativity.

Sheet music is copyrightable because the notes have been "fixed" onto a piece of paper. A recording of a band is copyrightable because the music has been "fixed" in the record, tape, CD, or other file.

You can copyright a specific description of a chess match, as I've fixed it here: "You could hear a pin drop as Kasparov proceeded with the Spanish Opening, a favorite for the Russian..."

What you can't do is use copyright to prevent someone else from extracting the facts from this description (e4 e5, etc) and presenting them in some other way.

So I could still go to a concert and publish the notes, pitches and timings of the sounds I heard because those are just facts not fixed to a medium like the chess moves here?

No, because there's a law specifically about live musical performances: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap11.html

That law is about fixing the sounds themselves, which is specifically what andromeduck is proposing not to do.

It's conceivable that andromeduck's distinction won't stand up in law, but you haven't addressed it.

Ah, right, fair enough.

It seems you would be allowed to do that, but good luck with doing that in real time. First recording it and transcribing it in that way afterwards is not allowed.

You could probably do it for stuff like country reasonably easily with some kind of steno setup.

> You can copyright facts that have been 'fixed in a tangible medium of expression' as long as there's some minimal element of creativity.

Oh hey, that's what I said In my first sentence! see next for tangible which I assumed was so trivially obvious.

"You can copyright a particular arrangement of facts ... where that arrangement required creative thought"

tangible like, published on website, recorded (think don't have any cameras at top level chess tournaments do you?), or just written down on piece of paper Or do you also imagine no one organizing chess tournament doesn't do that either?

How can you be so biased and unimaginative? Are you just being disingenuous to win internet argument?

If I hadn't given away my copyright to it (this sights EULA) I could prevent you (via copyright) from taking the facts (words) of this sentence and presenting them in some other way (public performance, painting of them etc). If you took the facts (words) and rearranged them then no. But a specific sequence of chess moves, not a rearrangement of them is what we are discussing.

Same as the particular sequence of notes or chess moves might be made of facts the sequence itself is copyrightable.

If I transliterated musical notation into one that used chess moves, do you imagine I'd get away with publishing sheet music?

What magical property do you image chess moves have that musical notes don't?

Are you always this hostile, or just to random people whom you have never met?

Anyways...

What I should have said is that you can copyright a presentation/display of facts, assuming it is "fixed in a tangible medium of expression", and that copyright gives you exclusive rights to that particular presentation. However, the facts themselves don't become copyrighted merely because they've been fixed in some form. Therefore, the fact that someone else has "fixed" the moves on a website, video recording, or cuniform table is irrelevant. Incidentally, the phrase "fixed in a tangible medium of expression" is important because it is literally the wording of the law.

When I wrote arrangement, I was imagining something like the layout of a table. If you, for example, generated a little diagram showing how the board changed after each move, those diagrams would be copyrightable, since you've arranged them in a specific creative way (you chose these icons, that layout, etc).

The arrangement of the data in a broader sense (i.e., curation) can make it copyrightable, but it has to involve some element of curation. For example, in Key Publications, Inc. v. Chinatown Today Pub. Enters, the Court held that a curated list of businesses (in this case, businesses that were thought to be especially support of or relevant to a Chinese-American community) was sufficiently creative to be copyrightable. However, the bar is low, but it is not zero. Under Feist, an obvious arrangement (alphabetical order) was not original enough for protection. I would argue that putting a sequence events in the order that they occurred is much closer to Feist. In fact, I'd argue that any other ordering would actually be closer to copyrightable (e.g., "Top 25 Chess Blunders of 2016").

The obvious counter-argument, which you seem to be making, is that if you're allowed to list facts in some naturally-occurring order, then you shouldn't be able to copyright anything, because you can just spam out a description of the contents: "An audio file containing "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath, when encoded using the default settings for libFLAC, starts with 3 frames of silence. This is followed verbatim block containing the following values....F"

These are facts, literally speaking, but they're vacuous. No one would be interested in them absent an attempt to reproduce the underlying work whose copyright you're (not) avoiding infringing. In contrast, the moves made during a match are of more general interest. This is a admittedly a grey area, but it's not particularly grey--maybe it's more off-white--and the law is full of grey areas and judgement calls.

In the US, other copyright laws do allow you to copy right a database or any other compiled work, as long as there was work that was conducted in order to create it.

This means that if you compile a database of open source material the database itself can we protected by copyright even if all of it's content is not protected by any copyright and is in the public domain.

This is why for example in the UK a phonebook can be protected by copyright but not in the US.

> as long as there was work

Not work. Creativity. Big difference.

Do not think of laypersons idea of what creativity means. Legal definition of creativity is so broad there is very little difference. If human did it and it wasn't strictly a mechanical process (like copying), if any decision / choice was made that is "creativity".

The integer sequence 78, 34, 56, 99, 23 is creative enough for copyright (probably, don't know for certain until judge(s)->SCOTUS says so)

You mean "can't"

I agree with your conclusion but not your reasoning. (you accidentally wrote "can" for "can't" at the end though, maybe you have time to correct it.)

So this is why I don't agree with your reasoning:

The fact is that Ambirex's comment at 11:22 PM Friday, November 11, 2016 UTC began with a capital T as his first move. Though he could have left it at that and left his opponents to reply, this was not his complete comment. The fact is, for the second letter of his comment he chose an 'h'. And the fact is, for the third letter, he chose an 'e'. The fact is, for the fourth character he had a space. The fact is, for the fifth character he had an 'm'. The fact is...

And so forth. So while these are certainly facts -- still, they are quite creative facts. More creative than the work you put into beginning your comment with "the main difference".

So while I actually happen to agree with you, this idea of the moves being "facts" versus acts of creative expression is dubious -- where is the hard line that separates that from my reproducing your comment (or any other copyrighted work) by reference to facts? They are facts, true, but they are also the creative output of two masters of the field.

In general for cases like this judges try to look at the pragmatics. This is why the judge is quoted as saying "He said the public interest would be served by 'robust reporting,' and analysis of the event."

The fact that for him this includes fully reproducing all the moves (which of course seriously impacts the market of the organizers - as well as reproducing the whole of the 'creative output', rather than just excerpts - both of which are important standards in copyright) is one that I can probably agree with.

But if he felt that the actual interests in the matter were another way, you bet that he could extend copyright protection to the creative work of playing a game. After all, it is rare for any game between grandmasters today to match one from a database. When they do, it is similar to when similar melodies are created independently.

In fact, a chess game likely has waaaaaaaay more entropy (I am making quite a technical argument) than very short melodies which are clearly protected by copyright and for which many "variations" are already owned by others.

Why are the "facts" of the melody more protected?

So I don't really agree with your interpretation. A fact would be like "white won" or "black won" -- rather than the creative output into the moves themselves. Though more creative than mere fact, I do agree with your conclusion -- for the same reasoning quoted in the article.

Are you a copyright lawyer? I'm thinking not, because cases like Feist v. Rural Telephone make it pretty clear what "facts" mean in the context of things you can copyright.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....

It's definitely not clear to me that playing chess is an uncreative task like compiling phone numbers. Though, perhaps I don't know enough about chess. This seems like an interesting case to me.

I'm not saying that playing chess is an uncreative task - it's very creative. Describing the chessboard position is an uncreative task. Evaluating the relative strength of the players' positions can be creative. But the position of the pieces? No.

Sure, but if choosing your moves is a creative task, then why wouldn't the moves be jointly copyrighted by the two players?

What's the difference between:

    1. e4 e5
    2. Qh5 Nc6
    3. Bc4 Nf6??
    4. Qxf7# 

and:

    fmt:    .string "Hello World!\n"
        .balign 4
        .global main
    main:
        stp    x29, x30, [sp, -16]!
        mov    x29, sp
        adrp   x0, fmt
        add    x0, x0, :lo12:fmt
        bl     printf
        ldp    x29, x30, [sp], 16
        ret 

if both are the result of a creative process?

Events that happens are facts, creative representation of facts is copywritable but not mechanical translations. Thus you can't get a copywrite on the S&P's closing value, but you can on a story about it. Further, a program has multiple possible representations, you can copywrite the code in one of them, but not gain a separate one for the compiled code.

PS: There are also many ways to generate code that don't create a copywrite.

You're talking past each other. I think everyone agrees with the decision, but it is indeed a gray area. The S&P closing value isn't comparable because it's the product of a stochastic process.

But even if there's a smart legal doctrine defining the difference between a chess game and two musicians writing a score, lets not pretend that such legal doctrines aren't created to arrive at the result that seems right. Not that there's anything wrong with that – look no further than the "smart contracts" fiasco to see the folly of trying to define rules in a "completely objective" framework.

PS: "copyright", not "copywrite".

Thank you.

You are not getting a very important distinction: no creative effort (not even a kernel of creativity[1]) is embodied in telephone numbers.

There is something though about the creative expression of chess board positions: they are EXTREMELY limited in terms of entropy. In coordinate notation 64*64 = 4096 choices would define either side's move, so given a dictionary of 4096 words, any typical chess game would be under a few hundred 'words': they're very very short creative expressions.

I would suggest that you compare them with musical melodies. they have about as much entropy. the database of existing melodies (or slight variations) is similar to the database of existing chess games.

in some cases melodies were held to be protected by copyright, so that you could not reproduce them in any form. I am not a lawyer, no. I researched many areas of intellectual property extensively. In general a basic melody might well be a "fact" about a song - yet a fact that you cannot use in your own song. (Similar to a patent.)

The judge, sensibly, chose not to extend the same protection to chess games. I agree with him! I just disagree with your reasoning. There's a reason the judge didn't advance it.

[1] https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyr...

Chess is far more constrained than that. Pawns generally have 0 or 1 move with the maximum possible of 3 moves followed by piece selection which is knight or queen as bishops and rooks have the subset of a queens moves. There are a maximum of 8 pawns. Thus (8 * 3 * 2) = 48

Kings have a maximum of 8 moves. 2 Rooks a maximum of 14 = 28, 2 bishops 12 = 24, and 2 knights 8 = 16, queen = 36. And this is individually on an actual board there is often less then 50 legal choices (ex: 20 for opening) and the average game is 40 move (pairs).

Thus you could encode most chess matches as a tweet.

I appreciate your analysis - however you need to compare it not with the length of a Tweet but rather with the entropy in a melody: whereas there are typically "less than 50 legal choices" and an average game is "40 moves", a melody that has been held to be protected by copyright has fewer than 50 legal choices for each note, and requires fewer than 40 notes (by far) to be protected by copyright.

I'd like to have you come back and compare chess games as actually played, with what has been held to be copyrighted simple melodies. I'd like to see that comparison and think you're good to go to make it.

Melodies are less constrained than that, timing between notes (which includes 0) note pitch and duration are all open. Which is why musical notation is really complex.

Further they are not patents two people can in theory both have copyright on the same melody.

I wanted you to look at actual case law - the minimal amount of a "melody" that barred others from reusing it. Then to compare the amount of information (or constraint) in that melody, with the case at hand.

If you need a hint, see arguments e.g. here - http://gizmodo.com/5962375/is-it-possible-to-run-out-of-new-...

and elsewhere. While you say that timing between notes and note pitch and duration are all open, in fact there are relatively few choices in actual modern practice.

In terms of choices, high level play also has a tiny fraction of the number of choices in practice. However, this has nothing to do with why it's protected or not.

I can also make a clif notes version of Harry Potter describing what happened in detail. That's not what copywrite protects.

>I can also make a clif notes version of Harry Potter describing what happened in detail. That's not what copywrite protects.

everyone can agree that summarizing a game is fine. We can also all agree that Chess games shouldn't be subject to copyright!

So, I'm not disagreeing with you or anyone.

As a very narrow technical issue, I would like to have a comparison between the number of choices (which key to play in; first note, its length; second note, its length; third note, its length; fourth note, its length) that goes into a melody that has been deemded legally protected, and a chess game.

Here is a protected riff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nLCa0YG1ZI&t=57s

Now please focus on just the first 8 notes, after picking a "starting note". The number of choices for where the melody goes, in the key that is in, is rather constrained: what has more creativity, 8-9 of those notes, or an entire chess game?

An entire chess game may well have more creative choices in it. After all, full-length chess games are quite rarely repeated! (independently). There are a rather large number of variations.

As further evidence, consider the term "novelty" which is a single choice at a particular move, which has never been played before (is a new variation/line.) The term "a novelty" in chess is quite specific and also is evidence that even when you are still in the opening, Chess people consider move choices to be quite creative.

All this might seem to imply that I am disagreeing wiht you or others: I'M NOT. Chess games shoudl NOT be copyrighted.

But as a very highly technical point of law, they contain more creative choices or entropy than other creative works that are protected.

Please be more careful in your analysis.

First you are ignoring chords and note timing which is an option. Second there are only 1,327 named openings and variants in chess many of them are known to be inferior so you do see a lot of repition in the beginnings and endings of Master level games.

As an order of magnitude each note in a melody is from a low end estimate of ~1,000,000 completely valid options though musical style will limit this.

Thus from an encoding standpoint a chess game is theoretically a much lower entropy. But, a sufficiently constrained melody may be lower but probably not. Consider an easy example: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DtvNAQ8KOqI

This is totally splitting hairs and I don't think we're adding to the discussion anymore. if you'll drop me an email (see my profile, since you don't list one) I'll spit back my analysis but it's really really pedantic and actually probably not worth our time. thanks for the exchange here.

The distinction is that the music is being composed as a creative activity and the notes are the essence of the production. The chess game is a game, winning is the game, and the notation is just one of many possible transcriptions of it.

If you composed a poem from chess notation, it would be copyrightable.

If you transcribed a chess game (mechanically) with a series of notes, it would not be.

And besides, if there was creativity (for its own sake) in the process and the moves were copyrightable it would be the players, not the stenographer, that owned it.

agree with everything you stated, ESPECIALLY the last sentence.

In an alternative reality where the players agreed that they were creating a creative work together, and signed the copyright to it over contractually, would your attitude change?

Can you talk a little bit about why a very short riff such as 10-12 notes of this -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nLCa0YG1ZI&t=57s

should be subject to copyright? (I also may be mistaken factually - perhaps it's not subject to copyright.)

As you can see from that video, there really are very few choices regarding the "next note". Maybe a few more choices than the possible legal moves on a board - but not by much.

>If you transcribed a chess game (mechanically) with a series of notes, it would not be.

I find this very very hard to believe. If I came up with simple rules for transcribing a chess game with notes and then discovered that for a particular chess game this was pleasant, you really don't think I could copyright that tune?

I'd be shocked if that were the case.

> In an alternative reality where the players agreed that they were creating a creative work together, and signed the copyright to it over contractually, would your attitude change?

Yes, that would probably be the same (in general) as any other work-for-hire.

> Can you talk a little bit about why a very short riff such as 10-12 notes of this [...] should be subject to copyright?

I imagine it is subject to copyright, a Haiku would be.

The grey areas here are that such a short sequence lends itself to brute-forcing which isn't creative and probably wouldn't result in a copyright, and that independent creators would each have their own copyright. You can't just generate all possible books (even if not combinatorially impossible) and block authors from writing them.

> I find this very very hard to believe. If I came up with simple rules for transcribing a chess game with notes and then discovered that for a particular chess game this was pleasant, you really don't think I could copyright that tune?

Your program to do this would be copyrightable, but it would only produce a machine-translation (by definition) of the chess game so while the end results (the tune) be copyrightable, it wouldn't be your copyright.

thanks.

Filming a football field is also uncreative, isn't it?

That's a well-settled issue. Are you really claiming that writing down the positions of chess pieces is similar to operating a video camera looking at 3D objects?

On the other hand, you might want to check out Corel v. Bridgeman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel....

From a position of total legal ignorance, I don't see a meaningful distinction. In both scenarios, you're recording an account of someone else's performance with enough fidelity for someone to know what's happening in the game. In the linked case, the issue seemed to be the the recorded content had no copyright, so I don't get why that's relevant? Very interested in a more detailed answer though :)

Why was this downvoted? I found it to be a pretty interesting perspective, although I do think the equation of letters in a sentence to moves in a chess game is pretty weak. Moves made in a chess game are events that factually happened in the past - copyrighting them would be akin to copyrighting a certain historical event, such that only a copyright holder is given privilege to state information about it. Letters, words, and sentences are in a creative space of expression that has its own rules and regulations.

It's a historical fact that "primitivesuave" wrote down the sequence of letters "Why was this downvoted? I found it to be a pretty interesting perspective...", but if I published it, I'd still be violating your copyright.

What's the difference between that and a chess game (which takes significantly more intellectual effort than a messageboard comment)

The difference is that they are playing a sports match, not writing a comment. The current score/position of the match is just a fact, not an artistic creation.

downvotes are probably because I could have taken on a legal perspective (but didn't), and I didn't talk about how much creativity goes into producing those facts. I want to be clear that I am fully behind the judge's choice: but he made it for pragmatic reasons, not because he couldn't have chosen for games to be copyrighted if he really wanted to. They could have been if he really wanted them to be, in the same way that simple melodies have been held to be copyrighted.

Where creative choices are incredibly constrained (as with a chess game -- there really isn't that much entropy going into one), or my example with simple melodies, the application of copyright becomes interesting.

There is a glaring inconsistency in this ruling when compared to the status quo for other sports. In baseball, football the Olympics etc the sponsors hold the broadcast rights and do with it as they deem fit. Why is this same right denied to the organizers of the World Chess Championship?

I think your analogy is wrong. Many websites broadcast live "play-by-play" info on MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL games. These are typically done, for example, by showing a graphic of a strike zone and where pitches are located as they are pitched. However, the actual game audio and video is not broadcasted. I don't believe you need any sort of license to display this information (correct me here if I'm wrong).

As far as I can tell, that's what's going on here: websites want to broadcast the "play-by-play" of the chess game, but not the actual game footage. Now, the play-by-play for a chess game is more important than the play-by-play for a hockey game, so I can see why the organizers of the chess tournament aren't happy, but I think the correct decision was made here.

When I watch MLB games streamed from mlb.tv, there is a warning at the end that says you may not reproduce or transmit the game or descriptions thereof (or something like that). I don't remember the exact language, but I do remember being struck by the fact that it extended beyond the game itself.

I would imagine that the websites that give play-by-play info may have paid for the right to publish information about the game, or they may be able to just watch it on TV (or live) and update their info that way. As another commenter noted, the organizers could have set up the competition to forbid the audience from disseminating info, but they didn't for whatever reason.

You are correct, but there is also a distinction between the posturing of sports giants like the MLB and the NFL and what would actually hold up in court in a possible legal challenge. My media law professor seemed pretty sure that, in a vast majority of these cases, those "prohibitions" would not hold up.

I'd be curious to know why they wouldn't hold up—did your professor give a reason or mention any particular cases that led him/her to reach this conclusion?

In my experience (lawyer in Palo Alto for 7 years), parties can agree by contract to do or not do many many things. Even provisions that limit legal recourse, like the much-decried mandatory arbitration clauses [1] have held up all the way to the US Supreme Court. I would be very interested to know what legal basis there would be to invalidate a license agreement that says: you can have access to this content but only if you promise not to tell other people about it.

1: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitrat...

"parties can agree", but I turned on my TV after the legalese was broadcast. The average website or software shrinkwrap has a lot better contract formation than that.

That seems like a cop-out avoiding the issue. If you did see it, what's the argument for it to be unenforceable? Note that it should be unenforceable, but it's a hard case to make without a certain amount of "I know it when I see it".

And "there are no limits to the content of contracts people freely enter" is obviously an untenable position – we'd all agree that a provision giving me your kidneys, hidden somewhere deep in the ToS is unenforceable.

Yeah, interestingly they show it at the end (I'm sure there's a reason, but of course you could have turned it off before that pops up). It's probably also in the mlb.tv subscription agreement, which again doesn't make it necessarily enforceable, but if they also show it during the broadcast it makes it a bit more likely to be enforced than if it's just one of a thousand things in the clickwrap.

They can claim these things but I am not certain such things will hold up in court.

> I think the correct decision was made here.

No it was not. It says in the article: Organizers ... failed to persuade a federal judge to block rival website operators from broadcasting chess moves ...

The defendants also said that they would not simply be copying audiovisual content generated by World Chess, but displaying the moves on their own computerized chess board while adding commentary and analysis.

The ruling directly attacks the business model of the organizers and will thus reduce the chance of attracting sponsors in the future. Hence, it is not in the public interest.

Chess is a peculiar game in that the visual content of any broadcast ie players actually playing, is subordinate to the moves made. Nobody watches a chess game online for 5 hours for the fun of seeing the players think. That's like waiting for the paint to dry. Take away the advantage of broadcasting the moves with commentary and analysis and your advantage as a sponsor is gone. I would have thought the judge would have understood this and taken it into account.

Yeah, a business model is more important than the non-copyrightable nature of facts. Good thing the judge understood the actual law, which is not concerned with business models.

> Yeah, a business model is more important than the non-copyrightable nature of facts.

I fail to see your point. The law should be applied with a dose of common sense. The organizers are not barring anyone from the "facts" as you put it just trying to get a lead in broadcasting. The law upholds the rights of organizers of other sports eg football and boxing based on their peculiarities and in case you are not aware is frequently biased in defense of their commercial rights (one only needs recall the absurdities surrounding the olympics).

For years, chess has suffered from crises caused by lack of sponsorship for events. If this ruling serves to deter future sponsors and leads to uncertainty or cancellation of matches (which has happened before) then what good is that?

Your argument can be summarized as that we should ignore what copyright law says because the consequence of the law is bad in this particular case for certain chess companies.

That's neither a sane or reasonable way to make legal judgments. Can you show a sound legal argument why the judge's ruling was wrong?

FYI, there used to be a 'hot news' doctrine that might have protected the chess moves (and the FIDE made this their argument), but it's been largely superseded or overturned [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_News_Service_v._...

"Hot news" is a good time to remember that copyright is shaped not only by US copyright law, but also by common law and the 1st Amendment.

Fortunately, the U.S. legal system does not afford corporations the right to a business model.

The copyright applies to the recording not the abstract information related to game state. This is similar to a radio broadcasting at a baseball game simultaneously with live video owned by separate company. Courts shouldn't expand rights to protect poorly thought out business models.

Take a sport like snooker and replace the footage with animated board which perfectly represent how the match is played. Would it be interesting enough to compete with the actually broadcast with video of the players and commentators?

You seem to think that business is the public interest. You are incorrect.

Plenty of third-party sites which don't hold any license from MLB, for example, will tell you "Currently 3-1, runner on 2nd, top of 8th inning, Smith, B. batting vs. Doe, J. pitching, count 1-2, last pitch 90mph called for strike on lower inside corner". And they'll update it with each pitch and each play.

The facts of the game are not copyrighted and not copyrightable, which is why sites can do this. Similarly, the moves of a chess game are facts which are not copyrighted and not copyrightable, which is why sites can tell you in real time who's playing and what moves have been made.

Because it's not the broadcast. This is comparable to newspapers not being allowed to report on goals in a soccer match or have any kind of live coverage (but still not showing the broadcast).

Except the moves in a chess game are deliberately chosen in a process involving nothing but intellect and creativity.

Scoring goals in a soccer match is something the players try to influence but it's ultimately outside of their control. I think publishing goals in soccer are more akin to publishing vague information like "Black lost his bishop on turn 4" but not the specific sequence of moves.

> Except the moves in a chess game are deliberately chosen in a process involving nothing but intellect and creativity.

If that were the case, they wouldn't be allowed to repeat moves played by others either...

Do they hold the rights to recounting what happened play-by-play without using any images or media from the event? That seems more comparable here.

They certainly claim to. The NFL loudly proclaims that "Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent, is prohibited."

I have a feeling that if they ever tried to prosecute the accounts part of warning they would lose miserable. Imagine them trying to argue that a person describing a game they'd seen to a friend required their consent. Maybe it would fly, IANAL, but that seems insane to me.

I can claim anything I want, it doesn't make it legally enforceable

I hereby prohibit you from commenting on Hacker News unless you send me $10 every time you access the front page.

No idea why you are being downvoted. Regardless of whether it's actually enforceable, this threat is definitely aired during every NFL game. MLB too: "This copyrighted telecast is presented by authority of the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball. It may not be reproduced or retransmitted in any form, and the accounts and descriptions of this game may not be disseminated without express written consent."

Sorry, I turned on my TV 1 minute after that was displayed.

This issue is called "contract formation", and any HN reader who's shipped licensed software or had a website with terms of service should be aware that showing something that a user may or may not have seen is the worst possible way to try to form a contract. That's why creating an account on almost all websites has a checkbox that the user has to check, with text that you're agreeing to certain terms.

I'd prefer to make a more forceful case that there are limits to contracts, and not to rely on the technicality of people saw the note, or if "a meeting of minds" actually happened.

What if the note is also in the actual contract that has my signature? Is the content of such contracts limited in any way?

I mean – it must be. I can easily get any number of people to sign contracts that include a right for me to their firstborn child.

Whatever legal doctrine courts would use to strike down such a provision should also apply to, for example, people waving their right to sue, to freely discuss the content of broadcasts, to rate the product/service being purchased etc.

Yup, I think you're looking for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability

If someone wanted to publish the plays and player movements in any of those games - they totally can.

What you're referring to is video broadcast rights. That's rather different. The World Chess Championship's rights on those weren't violated.

This is the equivalent of someone writing down the play-by-play in a game - and that would also be completely legal.

They have a right to the artifacts of their production - their specific footage of the event. They don't have a right to all possible descriptions of those events. That would be absurd - someone could sing "old MacDonald" and have it claimed that it is a codified description of the events of a game. But of course, they only have the rights to their description of the game.

I'm not sure I'd agree, the moves of a Chess game aren't really analogous to a broadcast. They're a lot more like a box score a play by play summary of a sport which I think are both legal to share. A broadcast of a chess game would be the analog of the broadcast of a sporting event. Unfortunately people aren't really that interested in Chess broadcasts, they'd rather just see the moves.

Broadcasters have rights to the content they create surrounding an event and by contractual agreement share those with relevant league in return for access to their facilities. Not to the factual events themselves. Nothing prevents an uncontracted source from reporting on the score at any time.

From a viewers perspective this is great. For past World Chess Championships you could watch ex pros/ high level players commentate on Youtube and Twitch.

fascinating.

stats.com charges like $80k per season per sport or something like that for access to their live game data api.

world chess should take this all the way, airing the moves for free is undercutting their business model. seems like it shouldn't be legal considering chess is a sport.

Many folks here dont seem to understand this or agree.

This seems a strange move. I wonder how the same judge would have ruled if it was about youtubers livestreaming NFL games.