U.S. judge rejects World Chess bid to block websites from airing moves

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-chess-world-lawsuit-idUSKBN13600V

by zbik • 10 years ago

194 124 10 years ago

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?

csmajorfive• 10 years ago

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.

cheald• 10 years ago

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."

maaaats• 10 years ago

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).

umanwizard2• 10 years ago

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.

freditup2• 10 years ago

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.

Lordarminius4• 10 years ago

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.

gnicholas3• 10 years ago

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.

jdoliner3• 10 years ago

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.

abritinthebay• 10 years ago

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.

Retra• 10 years ago

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.

ubernostrum• 10 years ago

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.

kevin_thibedeau• 10 years ago

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.

ambirex2• 10 years ago

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.

phonon• 10 years ago

You mean "can't"

logicallee10• 10 years ago

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.

greglindahl8• 10 years ago

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....

primitivesuave• 10 years ago

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.

njharman3• 10 years ago

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.

mattkrause2• 10 years ago

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.

scott00• 10 years ago

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.

CalChris• 10 years ago

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...

onestone• 10 years ago

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

JadeNB• 10 years ago

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... .

conistonwater2• 10 years ago

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.

bo10242• 10 years ago

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.

Mathnerd314• 10 years ago

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).

DrScump• 10 years ago

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?

mynameisvlad• 10 years ago

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.

dmurray• 10 years ago

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.

kuschku• 10 years ago

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.

rayiner• 10 years ago

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....

sigmar• 10 years ago

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.

bo10242• 10 years ago

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.

edblarney• 10 years ago

"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.

CJKinni• 10 years ago

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.

desdiv• 10 years ago

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...

greglindahl8• 10 years ago

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

seanalltogether• 10 years ago

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].

iaw2• 10 years ago

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.

MarkMc• 10 years ago

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

Symbiote2• 10 years ago

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

sweetjesus• 10 years ago

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.

robryan• 10 years ago

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.

throwaway_yy2Di2• 10 years ago

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/

freditup2• 10 years ago

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

conistonwater2• 10 years ago

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.

semi-extrinsic• 10 years ago

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?

trontron• 10 years ago

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.

Scarblac4• 10 years ago

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.

throwaway_yy2Di2• 10 years ago

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/...

grondilu• 10 years ago

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.

madaxe_again• 10 years ago

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

debt• 10 years ago

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.

Lordarminius4• 10 years ago

Many folks here dont seem to understand this or agree.

lordnacho• 10 years ago

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?

egeozcan• 10 years ago

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.

Scarblac4• 10 years ago

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

riskable• 10 years ago

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?

U.S. judge rejects World Chess bid to block websites from airing moves

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