now after seeing all of this go down can anyone beat Vas

[Dirt]

Everything that I can think of that is subject to copyright can be reduced to a number.

You think somebody would publish a very big number representing the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets encoding as a book???
And you think somebody would buy that to read it???

No, as a file. Then it would be decoded and read. What's the difference?

Once you come down to reality we can discuss why some numbers which have no other meaning except showing up in a computer program are or are not copyrightable...

It depends on whether the numbers express an original idea, and whether the expression of that idea is complex enough to be confident that no one else could come up with it independently.

And Bob might also manage to convince ppl why something like first 10 decimals of Pi number are not copyrightable but if you publish 10000 of them you can claim copyright.

I doubt he would try, as I am pretty confident you can't claim copyright on 10000 digits of pi. Any sequence of digits probably exists in pi somewhere, but finding a specific long one would be difficult.

[rbarreira]

If it was billion numbers you can't copyright them. Period. Numbers are not copyrightable.

That is very hard to believe. If I take, say, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and do a simple encoding to a very big number, then I can publish it with no fear of copyright violations? Why am I not seeing this done everywhere?

Everything that I can think of that is subject to copyright can be reduced to a number.

This "very big number" for all the Harry Potter books (and many others) already exists. It's called a PDF file (open it with a hex editor and you'll see the big number right in front of you).

[Milos]

No, as a file. Then it would be decoded and read. What's the difference?

PST tables, material values, rotated bitboards initialization tables they do not have any real meaning, they are not encoded creations of the human mind. So your "example" is pretty pointless except for trying to divert the discussion to the irrelevant.

It depends on whether the numbers express an original idea, and whether the expression of that idea is complex enough to be confident that no one else could come up with it independently.

Numbers by themselves cannot represent any idea and moreover ideas are not copyrightable. Numbers can only be an encoding of some other form of human creation. However that kind of number representation is completely irrelevant for this discussion.

I doubt he would try, as I am pretty confident you can't claim copyright on 10000 digits of pi. Any sequence of digits probably exists in pi somewhere, but finding a specific long one would be difficult.

There is absolutely no difference between some 10000 digits long sequence of Pi digits and 64x12 numbers in PST tables. Both have no real meaning other than being used in some calculations, both do not represent any idea or code and both are equally non-copyrightable.
To generate both you would use some copyrightable code, but once they are generated anyone can freely copy verbatim and use them as long as he doesn't use somebody else code for generating them without permission. It is as simple as that.
If you are even thinking to bring some ridiculous argument about effort needed to produce those numbers (tables), the effort to produce good prime numbers for RSA keys is far, far bigger and still those numbers are not in any way copyrightable or patentable. That's why cryptographic companies are keeping them so paranoiacally secret. And moreover, for example RSA-1024 size is of the same magnitude as the total size of PST tables, so the size is also a totally invalid argument.

[bob]

No, as a file. Then it would be decoded and read. What's the difference?

PST tables, material values, rotated bitboards initialization tables they do not have any real meaning, they are not encoded creations of the human mind. So your "example" is pretty pointless except for trying to divert the discussion to the irrelevant.

It depends on whether the numbers express an original idea, and whether the expression of that idea is complex enough to be confident that no one else could come up with it independently.

Numbers by themselves cannot represent any idea and moreover ideas are not copyrightable. Numbers can only be an encoding of some other form of human creation. However that kind of number representation is completely irrelevant for this discussion.

I doubt he would try, as I am pretty confident you can't claim copyright on 10000 digits of pi. Any sequence of digits probably exists in pi somewhere, but finding a specific long one would be difficult.

There is absolutely no difference between some 10000 digits long sequence of Pi digits and 64x12 numbers in PST tables. Both have no real meaning other than being used in some calculations, both do not represent any idea or code and both are equally non-copyrightable.

Nice statement, but false. Simple example. You can't copy a single PGN game (a string of digits). But you most certainly can copyright a collection of games, where the effort to put them together forms part of the value, such as Fischer's 100 greatest games. This is already settled case law. And it blows your nonsense right out of the water. Clearly there is effort involved in constructing and tuning the values in a piece/square table. Contrary to your rather myopic view.

Now pull your usual run and hide routine when facts run afoul of your argument.

To generate both you would use some copyrightable code, but once they are generated anyone can freely copy verbatim and use them as long as he doesn't use somebody else code for generating them without permission. It is as simple as that.
If you are even thinking to bring some ridiculous argument about effort needed to produce those numbers (tables), the effort to produce good prime numbers for RSA keys is far, far bigger and still those numbers are not in any way copyrightable or patentable. That's why cryptographic companies are keeping them so paranoiacally secret. And moreover, for example RSA-1024 size is of the same magnitude as the total size of PST tables, so the size is also a totally invalid argument.

[Chan Rasjid]

The bottom line (in my view) is this: if it is obvious to a knowledgeable observer that you could not have come up with the values you used without having seen those in another program you have made a derivative of that program. Of course this leaves room for interpretation but so do most laws.

That's pretty much how I view copyright law. Whether using equations to generate values for piece square tables that approximate yours would be a violation, though, I don't know.

Larry is correct with "without having seen those in another program". But if someone comes up independently with the same exact values, or close approximations, it does not violate any copyrights. I am interpreting these not as an expert in copyright laws, but intuitively. Intuition may sometimes be enough for a job.

I think Bob and some others use to say any parts taken from anything published is copyrightable except for single letters or digits - so Bob's bubble sort is copyrightable. This is intuitive. What is published (including nonsense) is an original creation of a person and copyright laws give protection to intellectual work and creation. The 12 * 64 values of the PST table is clearly copyrightable in general and in the proper context. It may be used freely provided it could be proved that the same exact values, or a close approximation, have been arrived at independently. Larry gave his reasons for opposing the Ippolit source because the PST values were too close an approximations to those he created in Rybka 3. But PST tables may have some problems regarding copyrights as there are some reasonable and unreasonable ranges of values for the squares and everyone would choose values with the same restrictions.


Anyone publishing the million digit value of PI also has copyrights over the sequence of digits in the original format, or maybe even in other format if derivation can be proven. Copying a long enough sequence of it without attribution could be a violation. It could be like money laundering where you have to prove where you got it from in a civil suit.

The bottom line in chess programming is to have an environment where (amateur) programmers could enjoy the hobby in a relaxed manner - better to have a very uneven ground than to have a very fair and very level playing field with land mines buried in the field for every three meter.

"When your brother is asleep and the wind blows exposing him, pull over his covering to hide his shame and nakedness" - .

Rasjid.

[rbarreira]

The idea of Kolmogorov Complexity comes to mind when reading this thread.

"The first 10,000 digits of pi" has a concise formula/algorithm for it. The same thing goes for optimal PST tables (which may not be the ones Larry found).

I'm not saying you'd need something as formal as actual Kolmogorov complexity to define what's copyrightable or not, but it does seem like the right direction to go... Or maybe a similar concept which requires the computation to be feasible without much computational power.

[michiguel]

The idea of Kolmogorov Complexity comes to mind when reading this thread.

"The first 10,000 digits of pi" has a concise formula/algorithm for it. The same thing goes for optimal PST tables (which may not be the ones Larry found).

I'm not saying you'd need something as formal as actual Kolmogorov complexity to define what's copyrightable or not, but it does seem like the right direction to go... Or maybe a similar concept which requires the computation to be feasible without much computational power.

That is a formal way to put what i was saying. For instance, my PST tables cannot be copyrighted. Why? I do not have any, which means, they are techinically equivalent to a big array initialized to zero. You cannot copyright that. It is too simple even though you have the same numbers that other complex elaborated PSTs.

Miguel