Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 131 posts

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

#81

Post by gnicholas »

greglindahl wrote: post #65
gnicholas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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.

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.

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

#82

Post by logicallee »

Retric wrote: post #69
logicallee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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

#83

Post by icebraining »

andromeduck wrote: post #64
mattkrause wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

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

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

#84

Post by MarkMc »

CJKinni wrote: post #53

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 publ…

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

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

#85

Post by waqf »

icebraining wrote: post #83
andromeduck wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#86

Post by Mathnerd314 »

scott00 wrote: post #20

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 h…

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).

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

#87

Post by edblarney »

DrScump wrote: post #40

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?

"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.

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

#88

Post by grondilu »

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.

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

#89

Post by Symbiote »

MarkMc wrote: post #84
CJKinni wrote: post #53

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 publ…

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.
Post reply on HN