Revised policy for World Chess Championship coverage
To: ICC members and staff
From: Joel Berez, President
Re: Revised policy for World Chess Championship coverage
I’d like to advise all of you about a change in policy regarding ICC relays and commentary of the Championship games whereby we will eliminate the delay in showing moves, effective as of Game 3 tomorrow.
Those of you who have been following our otherwise-excellent coverage know that the one flaw has been a 30-minute delay before we showed the moves or discussed them as having been made. This delay had been imposed upon us as a condition of allowing access to the venue for our on-site correspondent, Macauley Peterson.
ICC had been led to believe that all major chess sites would be subject to the same condition–which was intended to enhance the perceived value of the official coverage service by Foidos–thereby causing minimal negative impact for our own members.
Unfortunately this proved not to be the case, leaving ICC in the peculiar position of possibly being the only site honoring–or even expected to honor–this restriction, resulting in a great deal of angst and confusion and doing a major disservice to our members.
Many long time ICC members are aware of our view that chess moves are not protectable property and our track record of successfully fighting anyone who tried to claim otherwise, so they have been particularly surprised by this concession. However, the growth in the last couple of years of high-quality event coverage on ICC, including on-site interviews of top players as well as online qualifying events for major tournaments, has been facilitated by our shift from a sometimes adversarial relationship with tournament organizers to a more collaborative approach. In exchange for special and possibly unique access in these events, ICC will naturally try to accommodate any reasonable organizer requests.
As it turned out, though, the 30-minute delay proved to be neither reasonable nor workable. Therefore we will no longer delay the moves. Whether or not this will adversely impact our on-site access remainsto be seen, but we feel that it is more critical to bring our members the timeliest information possible and, in any case, this will not impact our excellent live commentary or popular game-of-the-day videos except to bring them to you 30 minutes earlier.
Please accept my apology for any discomfort that the previous policy may have caused you in the last two days and know that ICC continues to work hard to offer the best available coverage of any major chess event.
The ICC is lying. They were transmitting the games live from day 1. You just had to type “ob 448” instead of “ob 1”
BRAVO ICC!
While the delay is certainly inconvenient, I don’t think that it should cause “Angst”. 🙂
Of course I found and viewed “true live” transmissions, too. It just feels better. I think the extra value the FOIDOS users pay for, should be GM audio commentary, live video stream, and things like that but not a delay.
To be justified to charge a fee for a chess transmission, it is required to do it better than others usually did, but NOT to make others do it worse.
But since they are trying to start something new (or at least improved), they should be allowed to experiment a bit and that may include one or two wrong ideas. I am relaxed about it because so far, I don’t consider to pay extra fees for chess games transmissions anyway. I paid a fee for a general chess server membership period (which was included in the price of a chess software), and that’s it.
@ Anon 6:42:
The ICC isn’t “lying.” Game 1 was the only official ICC relay.
If some ICC member watching Foidos, PlayChess, Chessgames.com, Rybka, ChessCube or any of the other sites (with special arrangements or no on-site coverage) that could go “live” with impunity, and begins relaying the moves — in this case to Game 448 (a random number) — what exactly is ICC supposed to do about it? Muzzle all observers and nuke the member responsible?
Surely another private “live” relay would pop up moments later. And then another, and another, etc.
Other than implement Draconian measures that would clearly and adversely affect the service, the only thing to do is try to ignore it, which they did.
Ultimately it just proved to be too disruptive.
Taking information from copyright protected site is illegal (chess or not). There is no sense that organizers invest millions of dollars in organizing of tournaments, and ICC benefits from it without any payment. That’s morally, ethically and legally wrong. ICC can take interviews, photos, and whatever it produces, but cannot take content which belongs to the organizers and claim it as their own. Based on organizers investment and work, ICC is making revenues by selling memberships. That’s unheard of in any other market.
There is certainly room to argue the merits, but legally, the moves of a chess game (like the box score of a baseball game) are not copyrightable. They are matters of fact, and become history (and therefore public domain) as soon as they are played.
Videos, audio, photos and any content created to add value are, of course, protected by copyright.
You can package a box score into a nice product, trademark it and sell it, but you can’t prevent others from doing the same thing.
This is all settled law, if I’m not mistaken.
In any case, it would seem the organizers are conceding the point, based on their latest press release:
“After consultation with UEP, the organizer of the WCC match, CMS has decided to give, as of game 4 on Saturday, the files needed for broadcasting the games live, without the 30 minutes delay which has been practiced at the start of the event.”
Muahahaha.