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BGonline.org Forums
New Paper on Opening Replies
Posted By: Marty Storer In Response To: New Paper on Opening Replies (Albert Steg)
Date: Thursday, 9 July 2015, at 3:37 p.m.
I'm certain that game or match transcriptions are not copyrightable.
As Albert says, analysis can be copyrightable but quotations from analysis are governed by the fair use consideration. That can be complicated to adjudicate, but usually it's pretty straightforward. Of course, strictly objective analysis content like "White has 17 numbers to hit" can't be copyrightable. And in general, ideas are not copyrightable.
Regarding an interesting possibility: A Real Copyright Lawyer [TM], not a backgammon player, once told me he didn't know whether the original author could prevail in an infringement suit in the case where someone else republishes the author's book without the original analysis but just consisting of the entire collection of positions complete with new data and the someone-else's new analysis (whether it contains quotations from original or not). Other lawyers who were backgammon players strongly believed the original author couldn't prevail. But the Real Copyright Lawyer had litigated some big cases, and I didn't get the sense that the BG-player lawyers had done so or even necessarily specialized in copyright law. So if the RCL didn't know, I don't either. But at least by my way of thinking, someone publishing a knock-off book like that is on shaky moral ground.
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