Malweth’s Metablog

I’m reading through Ishida’s Joseki Dictionary, and came across what may be the best quote related to the study of go.

“White 5 permits an atari but it enables White to extend to 9. This is a feasible approach when Black has a stone at ‘a.’ Whatever happens, Black must give atari at 6. If one is afraid of ko, one should take up another game.”

This is appropriate advice… I hear beginners and even a few SDK complain about playing ko. Playing Go requres fighting spirit. Even if you don’t have the ability to win a game, pushing your hardest, even if the only chance you’re able to read is ko.

There’s an excellent article on Go Seigen’s basic theory of go at GoGoD: New in Go. This type of theory on powerful structures that affect the whole board is actually somewhat useful (especially for amateur experimentation with fuseki).

The go board diagram illustrating the different sectors of the board is also useful - not just from a board influence perspective, but also from a territorial perspective. These regions can help with measuring the score easier.

Julian Thomas Tamayo has arrived! This means my time for go has probably diminished significantly! Hopefully I can still find some time to study, but I think books and SGF files are going to be even more important to me (in fact… maybe things haven’t changed that much ;))

My go is doing well, though. I really don’t know what my rank is anymore, but I’m feel as though my play is much better. Hopefully I can continue to improve!

There are infinite levels of thought on copyright in general. Anyone who’s heard of an MP3, and at least downloaded one from the internet is fully aware of this continual debate.

This has some bearing in Go as well. Specifically, from the underlying copyright behind tsumego problems, game records, commentaries, and collections. This is something I need to think about when going forward with my website www.tsumego.net (which currently has no actual go problems, aside from the one or two in my blog and the private collections in my forum).

I believe there are certain major schools of thought behind the copyright of Go/Weiqi materials:

1. Freeeee! It’s all Freeeee! (And if I make money on it, that’s ok too).


2. All knowledge, writings, and creations are free. Attempting to sell someone else’s work or call it your own is illegal


3. Anything not published in a book that is available (in print) can be freely distributed. If it’s not available in English, it can be “fan” translated. If the author is not actively making money on it, it’s in the public domain.


4. All text is copyrighted (until copyright runs out). All game records, collections, problems, etc are not copyrightable.


5. The same as #4, but full collections of games or problems are copyrightable. Individual game records and problems are not.


6. Everything aside from game records is under copyright.


7. Everything, including the game records, is copyrighted. Game record copyright is shared by the players (and server).

Where do I fall? Somewhere between #4 and #5. This means that, for this site, individual game records and problems will NEVER have any claim to copyright. Any requests for individual items to be removed will always be ignored.

Conversely, collections of problems and game records MAY be copyrightable, but any conglomoration of these items is not. What this indicates to me is that I am fully allowed to take multiple sources [of problems], combine them, apply a different schema for categorization and they are now copyrighted by me. I wouldn’t necessarily take credit for the creation of the individual problems (neither do GoGoD and other database creators take credit for the individual game records).

The pertainent question is: at what point does a collection of many game records or many problems constitute a new “creative work” (with regards to the databasing schema), especially when the individual pieces may come from other sources.

Let’s create a hypothetical example:

I take all the problems from 1001 L+D Problems published by the Nihon Kiin (I have the chinese edition).
I take all the problems from Get Strong at Life + Death (and then some - this book has ample opportunity for the creation of new problems based on the basic shapes being discussed).
I take all the problems from the Korean Baduk Association.
I take all the tesuji from “Tesuji,” “Get Strong at Tesuji,” and the Japanese Tesuji Dictionaries (Go Seigen, Fujisawa, etc)

Suddenly I have a database of 10,000 problems from many different sources. The order bears no major relation to any single book and the order is, in fact, user determined (based on rank, etc).

The question is: why does anyone have any reason to purchase the books these problems were taken from? Essentially this is the purpose of copyright: people must be protected such that they can receive monetary reward for their creative contributions.

This question brings us back to the “MP3″ issue. What purpose do people have for buying the original when they have a good-enough copy of it? The only problem I have with this is the original premise that a VCR is an acceptable recording device because people have rights to fair-use. MP3s are fair-use, but the internet as a medium has destroyed the original premise.

If fair-use does not still exist, there is no way I can create my problem collection, unless I limit it to only a few people. If fair-use does exist, this conglomoration of problems can certainly be put in the public domain.

Next there arises the problem of original source. Many of the go problems available today are similar to or the same as ones available 100 years ago. This puts speculation on whether or not the collections mentioned above qualify for copyright for anything other than as a collection of works. If the only copyright these books hold is that of a collection (and any text generated by the authors) then creating a new collection from these (especially after transcribing them into SGF formats) would be a new creative work.

Summing up the above:

1. Collections are copyrightable


2. New collections can be created from old collections


3. If many of the Go Problems in a collection are from classical sources, the author holds copyright only on the collection and associated text


4. Individual problems cannot be copyrighted


5. Many unique problems can be copyrighted


6. THEREFORE: Creating a collection of (mostly) non-unique collections is not a violation of copyright

So from my book list above is stricken ONLY the Tesuji dictionaries. These dictionaries have very unique problems created by high level pros. IMHO, all other collections are fair game for my new collection.

Comments are welcome.