|
Moyo Go Sparks
Debate
By Roy Laird
How
did Kitani play against the variation of the san-ren-sei opening you've been
studying? Was there ever a game that used the exact same first ten moves as your
last match? Who likes the "avalanche" more, Takemiya or Cho Chikun? Thanks to
searchable databases, answers to questions like these are now just a mouseclick
away with software like GoGoD, GoBase, BiGo, Smart Go, and MasterGo. The latest
entry in the expanding go software industry, Frank de Groot's Moyo Go Studio,
has reignited the controversy about whether game records can be copyrighted ("A
World of Game Records," http://www.hilltopgo.com/agej/2003/2003-03-03.html),
an intellectu al property debate that now rages worldwide as Google proposes to
put libraries online and cheap Chinese DVD knock-offs show up on American street
corners.
After reportedly paying
CyberKiwon $600 for the use of their games, DeGroot, a Norwegian software
engineer, is now openly and systematically harvesting game records from the
collections of his competitors for his own commercial use, without their
permission and against their wishes. On his blog (at http://www.moyogo.com/blog/blog.htm),
he describes the process of siphoning data from other programs in detail: "As I
write this, the games on the latest GoGoD CD are importing into Moyo Go Studio
and it looks good - thousands of new games!" And later, "I have calculated that
it will take me about three months to export all of (SmartGo's) 30,000 games."
The creators of thos e
collections are outraged at what they consider DeGroot's blatant theft of their
work, having invested thousands of hours (and dollars) in the laborious
game-by-game manual entry of game records into their collections. While there's
a general consensus that no one has exclusive rights to a game record -- many
well-known games appear in all the major collections - the question of whether a
specific collection can be copyrighted is still being hotly debated. And beyond
the legal issues, there's a more fundamental question of the ethics of taking
work without permission or compensation.
De Groot's position on the legal
issue is that "There is nothing in a set of SGFs (games recorded in the widely
used Smart Go Format) that makes them copyrightable, when there are no added
comments." However, according to US law, "A (copyrightable) 'compilation' is a
work formed by the selection and assembly of pre-existing materials (e.g.
uncopyrig htable facts) or of data that are selected, coordinated or arranged in
such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes a work of authorship."
Phone numbers, for instance,
cannot be copyrighted, but phone books can be, as long as the collector
exercises a "minimal degree of creative judgment," beyond mere "industrious
collecting." Other types of legal protection are also available; for instance,
some programs contain a so-called "shrink-wrap" contract agreement in which the
consumer agrees not to reproduce the compilation. (see http://www.strategicgenomics.com/Jared/Go/dsaun_copyright.txt
for a fuller discussion of the law involved) A directive enacted by the European
Union in 1996 also explicitly prohibits "unauthorized extraction of all or a
substantial part of the data from a database for commercial purposes" and
"unauthorized re-utilization of all or part of the contents of a database for
commercial purposes."
Although the
legal issues of the use of game records may be unresolved, there seems to be no
disagreement on the ethical question. In a response to criticism of his behavior
on rec.games.go, de Groot wrote, "I agree. Still, I am going to do it. It is
wrong ethically, I fully agree. But not legally." (To view the entire thread go
to groups.google.com
Interestingly,
despite seeming to take an "information must be free" position, de Groot is
encrypting the games he has taken, rather than making them freely available in
SGF format, as have the creators of more established programs like GoGoD, GoBase,
BiGo, Smart Go, and MasterGo.
Game collection developers who
have invested significant resources over the years to build and maintain their
collections are worried that de Groot's actions threaten the usability and
existence of such collections. The obvious response to sticky digital fingers is
for programs like GoGoD and SmartGo to remove the handy feature that allows the
user to export game records as sgf files. And if someone can simply take such
work product without permission or cost, the go software market - which is
fairly limited to begin with -- is undermined and may well force out developers,
an obvious loss for the go consumer.
Beyond the legal and ethical
issues, the reality is that the go community is close-knit and thus far, the
general response to de Groot's (who is not a go player) actions has been fairly
negative. Major information sources like Sensei's Library and Gobase contain no
references to Moyo Go; go software link pages (e.g. http://www.britgo.org/gopcres/record.html)
don't mention it and distributors don't sell it. The AGA, committed to the free
flow of information, does provide a link to MoyoGo on its Computer Go page -- http://www.usgo.org/resources/computer.asp#study
-- along with dozens of other go software programs, and will include the program
in an upcoming series of reviews of such software. Any references to Moyo Go
will note the controversy; as informed citizens of the world go community, we
each must decide how to live in that world.
Back to Columns
|
|
