The Kibitzer

Chess Games Belong To The World

By Tim Harding

Some chess players may think they will benefit if the recent FIDE
move towards the copyrighting of chess games goes ahead, but I
can assure you that 99 per cent of the chess community will suffer
and that means you, dear reader. So I call on you all to put pressure
on FIDE, directly or through whatever national chess organisation
to which you may belong, to call a halt to this lunacy now. What
should be protected is the "value added" of good notes by the
players and good writers and chess teachers, not the "bare" scores
(whether in print or on a web page or a computer database) that
just give the moves played in a game.

Just to give the background for those who don't know the issue,
FIDE announced a few weeks ago the rules for its forthcoming
knockout world championship contest and these included under
Paragraph 10 - Playing Conditions (10.2 c): "The players' score
sheets are the property of the players and FIDE, and FIDE has
exclusive rights to publication." Read those words carefully; I shall
return to them later.

I am not a lawyer so will not go into many legal technicalities here,
but for those who want to explore that aspect I recommend you
read Mark Crowther's lengthy article on the topic in The Week In
Chess, No. 146, which includes a legal opinion that sounds about
right to me. You can easily find TWIC on the Net and read it for
yourself.

My arguments in this column are essentially layman's views but
are based on my 30+ years as an active chess player at a fairly high
level, 25 years as a published chess author and journalist, and now
with a publisher's hat to wear too! 

Actually I doubt if FIDE have a legal leg to stand on, given there is
a century of precedent of free publication of chess games
worldwide while previous legal attempts to copyright games (in a
few countries) have failed, so I hope that this is just a try-on and
that they will back down. However, let us look at the scenario if
FIDE were to win a test case in a major jurisdiction such as the
USA, United Kingdom or Germany.

As a practical master-level correspondence player, I might find it
beneficial to my results in the short-run if my games were harder to
get hold of, so that my opponents could not so easily prepare for
me, and it may be that FIDE hope the majority of master level
players will back their move for that reason. Maybe by refusing
permission for my losses to be published, I could even spare
myself some blushes. However, those gains would be more than
outweighed by my not easily being able to obtain the games of
opponents and of other players who are approximately at my level,
as well as by having to pay to see what the Kasparovs and
Topalovs of this world are getting up to.

Certainly the top grandmasters are the only players, if any, who
will make any money out of this. The games of major events will
still be available, but somebody will get paid for them. We'll come
to that in a minute. The games of ordinary Joe and Jill Soaps
played in ordinary chess competitions could become
unpublishable, except where players themselves send them in for
publication.

In a worst case scenario, we could even see chess journalists and
publishers sued for articles and books already published but it is
more likely that FIDE would attempt to enforce their view on a
"from now on" basis. If FIDE succeeded in controlling the game
scores in events under its own jurisdiction, the world
correspondence chess governing body ICCF might be tempted to
try and follow suit, and the same could go for other bodies that
organise chess events, such as national associations and even clubs
and commercial tournament organisers.

Curiously with correspondence games, there is a split. Traditional
postal games, unlike over-the-board games, are not played in
public so usually only the players and perhaps the tournament
director ever sees the moves. On the other hand, email games
played under the auspices of ICCF and IECG cannot at present be
hidden from future opponents, as these organisations email
monthly reports (including the PGN game scores of all completed
games) to all those who compete in their events. Of course they
could change that policy.

Undoubtedly many chess organisers have doubts about the value of
chess databases, and particularly free games postings on the Net,
because it hits at a possible source of income for them and makes it
harder, for example, to produce a saleable tournament book when
all games are already available freely. However, if they were to
back FIDE's move, they would in my opinion undermine the
popularity of the game.  For example, newspaper columnists would
have to tell their editors they can only publish a game by a player
who is not fifty years dead if he or she has actually sent them the
game; otherwise a fee will be payable, just as radio stations have to
pay a fee for every record they spin. Speaking as somebody who
wrote a national chess newspaper's weekly chess column for
almost two decades, the editor and his accountant would say
goodbye and run a column on Scrabble or knitting instead.

Now to put on my chess publisher hat, I would fear that "Chess
Mail" (and many other magazines) might have to cease publication
if copyright was enforceable on correspondence games. At the very
least, we could only publish games sent to us by either one of the
players or the tournament director and would require a written
confirmation from them that we could publish the game. We might
even have to cut references to other players' games from the notes!
The chess publishing world would shrink dramatically. You would
probably be left, in each main language, with only two or three
giants who would swallow the cut in their profits and pay up in
return for the pleasure of seeing most of their competition vanish -
and maybe a few minnows whose circulation and income would be
too small to be worth suing. 

With my chess author hat on, I can tell you that publishers would
eagerly start commissioning books on areas of the game that
wouldn't easily fall under FIDE's hammer (e.g. endgame books,
books on 19th century chess, chess variants and players'
autobiographies) while the authors of openings manuals would be
told that it is no longer OK to include modern complete games
unless they are accompanied by a notarised letter of permission
from one of the players. In other words, forget openings books.

I always have written my own books and articles under the (up to
now) prevailing view that bare unannotated game scores are public
events, like the scorecard of a cricket or baseball game which could
be compiled by anyone who watched it. Quoting other people's
annotations at length would normally require permission, but short
excerpts would fall under the accepted principle in the academic
world that free quotations for the purpose of comment and
criticism are normal practice essential for free debate. When I
wrote notes to one of my games for a particular magazine, as a
favour to its editor, and then saw it copied (without even a "may
I?" request) in "Fernschach", I moaned but I did not sue. Maybe
next time!

At this point, I would just like to refer back to the FIDE rule above,
which really mixes up two different copyright issues. "The players'
score sheets are the property of the players " can only be taken to
the individuals' handwritten record of the game as it was in
progress, and as such there is not really a problem. Of course only
the most famous players can expect to be able to make any money
out of selling their autographs (Kamsky tried it a few years ago)
but so long as the gamescores (i.e. the record of the moves) remain
available, I would not have any problem with this.

The second part of the rule is where the problems arise: "and FIDE,
and FIDE has exclusive rights to publication." The final clause is
also clear enough, albeit objectionable: FIDE is saying that it, as
organiser of the event, and NOT the players have the right of
publishing the games. In other words, if Karpov plays Kramnik in
the event and one, other or both of the players want to send the
games for publication to, say, Informator or New In Chess they
cannot do this without FIDE's permission (or perhaps without
those publications buying some kind of licence from FIDE).
Karpov can say but these are my notes, but FIDE can retort that the
right to publish the game is its alone. If the readers can figure out
from the notes alone what the moves were, they must have a very
high IQ.

The middle part of the sentence is most curious also. In the FIDE
rule quoted above, that first "and FIDE" means that FIDE intends
to assert equal right with the players to ownership of the
intellectual copyright of the game played between them. Leaving
aside for the moment the question of whether a chess game can be
intellectual copyright, FIDE claims here that because a game is
played under its auspices, it owns the game (at least in part).
Effectively FIDE is stating that, in competing in one of its events
t,he players are working for FIDE on an indentured basis rather
than as freelances. However, the contestants are playing for prize
money, not fixed salaries, so I think this one is a non-starter, Mr
Ilyuzhiminov.

Finally, are chess games copyrightable at all? As a chess author
and publisher, I am certainly interested in defending copyright
where it genuinely exists, especially as so many people on the Net
are very casual about it. However, as Mark Crowther put it so well
in TWIC 149: "I have no problem obeying the law, I do have a
problem obeying laws that don't exist". Intellectual copyright may
exist where an author, or artist, working alone produces a text or
other identifiable piece of work (it could be sculpture or music but
one-off "performance art" would not qualify) which is
reproduceable. It does not have to be artistic work; a textbook or
any other original writing also qualifies. In that case the law says
that the creator, or his/her heirs, own the rights to reproducing it,
normally until 50 years after their death. If there are joint authors,
they choose to create the work together and share in the rights
arising.

A chess game does not come about in this way, but rather by
conflict between the two players, as a football game arises from the
interplay of two sides. It's not possible for me to say "I have
copyright in the white moves and you have copyright in Black's
moves"; neither is meaningful without the other and even if we
decide to share the rights to the game, it is debatable whether the
record of a public event is copyrightable. 

So finally we have to ask the old question, "cui bono?", who would
benefit? Clearly apart from FIDE itself, one or two companies like
ChessBase, who would be able to increase the prices of their
databases, and just a few top grandmasters, who already cream off
most of the money that's available to be made in the chess world.
Do you really want to support a move that will make you, and
chess literature poorer while these happy few get richer?

Finally, it would be ironic if a column devoted to defending the
freedom to publish chess games did not itself contain a game.
There is no special significance in my choice. It's just one of the
best games that we published this year in my magazine "Chess
Mail". The notes aren't great because they are mine, and I know
that nobody else can claim them because I received the bare game
score by fax just before going to press, scrapped a standing page to
fit it in, and analysed it as best I could in limited time. 

Sicilian Keres Attack (B81) 
White: CC-GM Gert Jan Timmerman
(Netherlands) 
Black: GM (ICCF and FIDE) Ulf Andersson
(Sweden) 
NPSF-50 (Norwegian Jubilee) Correspondence 

1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 e6 6 g4 h6 7 h4 Nc6
8 Rg1 d5 

The critical continuation for the fight in the centre. It forestalls
White's threat of g4-g5. Andersson's views on this game were
expressed in an interview with Lars Grahn, editor of "SSKK
Bulletinen" republished with permission elsewhere in the same
issue. The game was still going on when they met and Ulf told
him: "Instead of replying  h7-h5 as I normally do, I countered
with  d5. I looked for something extraordinary."

9 Bb5 Bd7 10 exd5 Nxd5 11 Nxd5 exd5 12 Be3 Be7 

Here in my notes I quoted "ECO":12 ...Qxh4 13 Qe2 Nxd4 14
Bxd4+ Qe7 15 Bxd7+ Kxd7 16 Be3 (16 Qxe7+ Kxe7 17 0-0-0
f6=) 16 ...Rd8 17 0-0-0 Kc8= (analysis by Makarichev).

13 Qd2 

In his book "Chess at the Top", Karpov mentioned the alternative
13 Qe2 0-0 14 0-0-0 (Instead of 14 Bxc6 bxc6 15 g5 c5 unclear
according to Liberzon, ECO) 14 ...Qa5 15 Bxc6 bxc6 16 Kb1 with
advantage to White, but he gave 13 Qa5+ 14 c3 Nxd4 15 Bxd7+
Kxd7 16 Bxd4 Rhe8 17 Kf1 Bf6 18 Qf3 Re6 as a possible
improvement.

13...0-0! 

This threatens ....Nxd4. This move, not in ECO, was dismissed in
analysis by Karpov in 1980. Andersson's novelty is in showing it
to be playable; instead of capturing an h-pawn he will sacrifice his
own for the initiative, based on fantastically deep calculation. Not
13 ...Bxh4?! 14 0-0-0 Bf6 15 Nf5 (Karpov-Spassky, Tilburg 1980;
Informator 30/440) while 13...Nxd4 14 Bxd7+ Qxd7 unclear
(Marjanovic-Cebalo, Yugoslav Ch 1962) may be found in
Informator 33.

14 Nf5 (See Diagram)

14 ...d4!

Karpov only considered 14 ...Bf6 15 Nxh6+ gxh6 16 g5 with a
decisive attack and 14 ...Bxf5 15 gxf5 Kh7 16 0-0-0 with clear
advantage to White.

Andersson told Grahn: "This is a game I have analysed very
carefully. It is necessary to play very exactly with a pawn down,
like in this game, and it is very difficult to find the correct moves
OTB. In the opening my judgment was that this is OK for Black, I
had positional compensation for the pawn and I estimated that I
have time enough for this game to find the right moves."

15 Bxh6!? Bb4 16 c3 dxc3 17 bxc3 Ne5 

The threat of the family fork by the knight and the second threat to
b5 give White no time to capture on either g7 or b4. 

18 Be2 

Not 18 Nd4?? Bxb5 19 cxb4 Nd3+.

18 Re8 

Renews the threat of  Nf3+ and forces White's king to move. 

19 Kf1 Bf8 

The threat phase is over; everything is protected and, for the pawn,
Andersson has great piece activity. 

20 Bf4 Qa5 21 Rg3 Rad8 22 Nd4 Ba4 23 h5

White tries to generate some attack but perhaps this tempo should
have been used to improve the position of one of the rooks.

23  Nc6 24 Be3 Nxd4 25 Bxd4 Re4 26 Qb2 Bc5 27 Rb1 

If 27 Bxc5 Qxc5 28 Rd3 Rde8.

27 Bxd4 28 cxd4 Bc6 29 Rd1 Rf4 30 d5?! 

White returns the extra pawn in the hope of simplification but
Andersson keeps the initiative. 

30...Rxd5 31 Rgd3 Qc5 32 f3 Rxd3 33 Rxd3 Qg5 34 Ke1 Rc4

The start of the final assault.

35 Kf2 Qh4+ 36 Ke3 Rc5 37 Rd1 Qg3 38 Rd8+ Kh7 39 Bd3+ f5
40 Qd4 Qxf3+ 41 Kd2 Qg2+ 42 Ke3

If 42 Be2 Rd5 43 Rxd5 Bxd5 and White faces a lost pawn ending
after  Bf3.

42 Qg3+ 43 Kd2 Qh2+ 44 Be2 Re5 45 Qc4 Bf3 46 Qg8+ Kh6 47
Qh8+ Kg5 48 Qxg7+ Kh4 49 Qf6+ Kh3 0-1. 