World’s chess fans await next move in battle over tournament broadcasts
Organiser of competition to determine who will play Magnus Carlsen for world title threatens to sue websites showing moves
Stephen Moss
The tournament to determine who will play the reigning world chess champion, Magnus Carlsen, for his title later this year is under way in Moscow. For the eight grandmasters doing battle, this biennial contest – called the candidates tournament – can be career defining. But this year the on-board struggles are being overshadowed by an even more hotly contested off-the-board fight over the right to broadcast the moves in the games being played.
Usually when a tournament of this importance is played, the moves of the games – which can take up to seven hours to complete – are carried in real time by a dozen or so websites, operating from a variety of different countries and broadcasting in different languages to audiences numbering tens of millions. But a few days before this year’s tournament began, Agon, the company which organises the world championship cycle, announced that as the holder of the rights to the event it also claimed exclusive rights to the moves and would sue any other website that carried them.
The legal threat has been met with an angry reaction from chess sites that routinely carry the moves as they happen. “This is a huge blunder,” wrote Anton Mihailov, CEO of the Bulgarian-based website chessdom.com, which styles itself “the global chess news site” in response. “The moves [are] the very essence of the game itself. It is an element loaded with historical right of freedom, public domain value and global availability. … Clearly unaware of the global mechanics in chess journalism and largely ignoring the desire of the chess community, Agon has put the whole world chess championship cycle in jeopardy.”
Chessdom’s position received wide support on social media from chess lovers who preferred to follow the games on their favourite websites and do not want to be compelled to follow games on the Agon-owned worldchess.com.
Full article here.
Since all chess moves are legally in the public domain once played, Agon cannot arbitrarily claim rights to those moves. They can only claim copyright protection on ‘new moves’ (or TNs), and resultant positions following said TNs, that occur DURING their events. Consequently, to protect their rights, Agon should require all games to begin at a specified ‘TN-WTF (With Their Favor) start position. Officially these positions should be identified as TN(A)-WTF#1, 2, 3, and so on. It should be verified that each TN(A)-WTF position has in fact never occurred before in any other FIDE sanctioned event. Players wishing to submit their own start positions must do so in writing within 60 days prior to the event in order that the TN can be verified and assigned an official Agon TN(A)-WTF number. Players then draw these numbers randomly from a pool each round and proceed from that approved start position. In the event the position reaches an endgame position that has previously occurred, the game must be stopped immediately, the offending move retracted, and an alternate move made that would again set the game on an original path. Failure to do so would necessarily violate the Agon–player contract and result in immediate forfeit of the game.
I know you’re trying to be funny, but on the serious side, how is this different from broadcast rights for sports events, like football? Maybe there hasn’t been as much money in chess spectatorship before so the subject hasn’t come up, but I don’t see Agon as the bad guy at all here.
I dont think anybody is talking about broadcasting live video stream here. It is just the moves that they have already played. If any website is doing re broadcast of the live webstream ( showing players playing ) it is a violation of broadcast rights. But this is just like other sites show the scores of the soccer, or football that is going on live and it is not a violation.
Find any sporting event with ‘broadcast rights’ and you can find any number of alternate sites that will give a play-by-play in live time. Agon does not and cannot legally own the moves being played. It’s a bad move to even try this extortion tactic. It’s good that this is coming out now, though, and not during the World Championships.