I don't see the analysis of Houdini in this Championship?

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

http://moscow2012.fide.com/en/

Why Houdini

Because it tops the rating list by 25-30 Elo at best,up till now

Personally I'll pass....

[gerold]

I fail to see why the use of the engine would need special permission to be used in a website.

Because it is not be allowed by the license agreement:

Subject to the terms and conditions of this agreement, permission is granted
to install and execute the Houdini Chess Engine (the "Software") and use the
associated files for personal use. This license does not grant any right of
additional use other than the above.

This Software or the accompanying files may not be reproduced in any way
without prior written permission from the copyright holder.
You may not rent, lease, assign, transfer or re-distribute to the public the
Software. You may not modify the Software or merge all or any part of them in
another program, nor reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the Software.

Publishing Houdini analysis on a commercial web site is not covered by "personal use".

Robert

If testers in this forum and other forums test Houdini and post the results and allow games to be downloaded is that breaking the copyright if copyright holder did not approve it first.

[gleperlier]

If testers in this forum and other forums test Houdini and post the results and allow games to be downloaded is that breaking the copyright if copyright holder did not approve it first.

Please stop trolling.

If one don't understand the difference between posting a game and publishing an Engine analysis on a website for the most important event in Chess, then

[chrisw]

If testers in this forum and other forums test Houdini and post the results and allow games to be downloaded is that breaking the copyright if copyright holder did not approve it first.

Please stop trolling.

If one don't understand the difference between posting a game and publishing an Engine analysis on a website for the most important event in Chess, then

Not specifically referring to the above but there seems to be some confusion here. The "personal use" concept comes from the music and video industry, where broadcast to an audience is excluded by the "personal use" term.

But video and audio is different to software, the output of a video/audio CD is the copyright material, the song, the film or whatever and you would have no licence to distribute the copyright material to others again and again. The output of a program however is not copyright to the developer, his copyright extends to the code and support data only. Thus Robert Houdart, or anyone else, has no right to prevent use of the program output in any way, "personal use" terms or not.

[JuLieN]

If testers in this forum and other forums test Houdini and post the results and allow games to be downloaded is that breaking the copyright if copyright holder did not approve it first.

Please stop trolling.

If one don't understand the difference between posting a game and publishing an Engine analysis on a website for the most important event in Chess, then

Not specifically referring to the above but there seems to be some confusion here. The "personal use" concept comes from the music and video industry, where broadcast to an audience is excluded by the "personal use" term.

But video and audio is different to software, the output of a video/audio CD is the copyright material, the song, the film or whatever and you would have no licence to distribute the copyright material to others again and again. The output of a program however is not copyright to the developer, his copyright extends to the code and support data only. Thus Robert Houdart, or anyone else, has no right to prevent use of the program output in any way, "personal use" terms or not.

This *might* (I say might because I'm not a specialist of compared law, so my knowledge of the anglo-saxon law is very superficial) be true in anglo-saxons countries, Chris, but not in other countries. For example in continental Europe the copyright laws for software are exactly the same as the ones used for books and movies/songs. And in Belgium, where I believe Robert lives, the law is nearly a duplicate of the French one (Belgium's law is based on Napoléon's civil code, just like France). They are divided in two categories:

- moral rights (those are actually attenuated, when compared to those for books/movies/songs, but we won't discuss them here).
- patrimonial rights. Those ones are subdivided into:
* reproduction rights
* representation rights
* traduction, adaptation rights
* selling rights

In our case here, the problem concerns the representation rights. They are often defined as "the communication of the work to the public by any mean" (ex: demonstrating a software during a fair, conferences, and so on...). This right is only suspended for the "private representations, and exclusively inside the family circle." This is not exactly what this FIDE event is.

Other accepted exceptions are:
- analyses and quotations of the work;
- press reviews;
- broadcast to the public for pure information about the work;
- parody, mockery.

So the question is: is broadcasting Houdini's output to the public a representation of Houdini? I don't think so. An illegal representation of Houdini would be to let the public of an event use Houdini on public computers.

[michiguel]

If testers in this forum and other forums test Houdini and post the results and allow games to be downloaded is that breaking the copyright if copyright holder did not approve it first.

Please stop trolling.

If one don't understand the difference between posting a game and publishing an Engine analysis on a website for the most important event in Chess, then

Not specifically referring to the above but there seems to be some confusion here. The "personal use" concept comes from the music and video industry, where broadcast to an audience is excluded by the "personal use" term.

But video and audio is different to software, the output of a video/audio CD is the copyright material, the song, the film or whatever and you would have no licence to distribute the copyright material to others again and again. The output of a program however is not copyright to the developer, his copyright extends to the code and support data only. Thus Robert Houdart, or anyone else, has no right to prevent use of the program output in any way, "personal use" terms or not.

This *might* (I say might because I'm not a specialist of compared law, so my knowledge of the anglo-saxon law is very superficial) be true in anglo-saxons countries, Chris, but not in other countries. For example in continental Europe the copyright laws for software are exactly the same as the ones used for books and movies/songs. And in Belgium, where I believe Robert lives, the law is nearly a duplicate of the French one (Belgium's law is based on Napoléon's civil code, just like France). They are divided in two categories:

- moral rights (those are actually attenuated, when compared to those for books/movies/songs, but we won't discuss them here).
- patrimonial rights. Those ones are subdivided into:
* reproduction rights
* representation rights
* traduction, adaptation rights
* selling rights

In our case here, the problem concerns the representation rights. They are often defined as "the communication of the work to the public by any mean" (ex: demonstrating a software during a fair, conferences, and so on...). This right is only suspended for the "private representations, and exclusively inside the family circle." This is not exactly what this FIDE event is.

Other accepted exceptions are:
- analyses and quotations of the work;
- press reviews;
- broadcast to the public for pure information about the work;
- parody, mockery.

So the question is: is broadcasting Houdini's output to the public a representation of Houdini? I don't think so. An illegal representation of Houdini would be to let the public of an event use Houdini on public computers.

Actually, it is the output of Aquarium (I am kidding, but not too much because the output is modified heavily by aquarium. I doubt Houdini provides database references and comments in English)

Houdini is a tool, so it is used as such, and the product is shown to the world. When someone sells a tool, it may have some control over its use, but not to the product of its use. At least, that is how the law should be. Anything else is insanity. Otherwise, I could not publish in a book analysis that were helped using an engine, or I could not publish analysis in this forum. What is the difference between broadcasting it or publishing it in a forum? nothing. Gerold sarcasm is right on the money.

Miguel
Miguel

[Cubeman]

If testers in this forum and other forums test Houdini and post the results and allow games to be downloaded is that breaking the copyright if copyright holder did not approve it first.

Please stop trolling.

If one don't understand the difference between posting a game and publishing an Engine analysis on a website for the most important event in Chess, then

Count me in the group that not know the difference

[gleperlier]

Count me in the group that not know the difference

Popcount : 2

[chrisw]

If testers in this forum and other forums test Houdini and post the results and allow games to be downloaded is that breaking the copyright if copyright holder did not approve it first.

Please stop trolling.

If one don't understand the difference between posting a game and publishing an Engine analysis on a website for the most important event in Chess, then

Not specifically referring to the above but there seems to be some confusion here. The "personal use" concept comes from the music and video industry, where broadcast to an audience is excluded by the "personal use" term.

But video and audio is different to software, the output of a video/audio CD is the copyright material, the song, the film or whatever and you would have no licence to distribute the copyright material to others again and again. The output of a program however is not copyright to the developer, his copyright extends to the code and support data only. Thus Robert Houdart, or anyone else, has no right to prevent use of the program output in any way, "personal use" terms or not.

This *might* (I say might because I'm not a specialist of compared law, so my knowledge of the anglo-saxon law is very superficial) be true in anglo-saxons countries, Chris, but not in other countries. For example in continental Europe the copyright laws for software are exactly the same as the ones used for books and movies/songs. And in Belgium, where I believe Robert lives, the law is nearly a duplicate of the French one (Belgium's law is based on Napoléon's civil code, just like France). They are divided in two categories:

- moral rights (those are actually attenuated, when compared to those for books/movies/songs, but we won't discuss them here).
- patrimonial rights. Those ones are subdivided into:
* reproduction rights
* representation rights
* traduction, adaptation rights
* selling rights

In our case here, the problem concerns the representation rights. They are often defined as "the communication of the work to the public by any mean" (ex: demonstrating a software during a fair, conferences, and so on...). This right is only suspended for the "private representations, and exclusively inside the family circle." This is not exactly what this FIDE event is.

Other accepted exceptions are:
- analyses and quotations of the work;
- press reviews;
- broadcast to the public for pure information about the work;
- parody, mockery.

So the question is: is broadcasting Houdini's output to the public a representation of Houdini? I don't think so. An illegal representation of Houdini would be to let the public of an event use Houdini on public computers.

ok, but another example ....

suppose we write some software, a simple algorithm, it takes any page of text, extracts the 1st, 13th, 25th, 19th etc etc according to a stored formula, 37th word and concatenates them into a sentence.

output = blaha blahb blahz la di da

My contention is that we have copyright over the program but not over the output. Simplistically we have:

program operates on [huge sample of all the world's texts] and outputs a string of data according to an algorithm.

Likewise, chess program operates on [huge sample of possible chess positions] and outputs a string of data according to an algorithm.

In neither case can the programmer predict the output data string, because he cannot personally deal with all the possible input situations. The programmer cannot lay copyright claim over a huge subset of possible output data strings that he doesn't know about and can't predict and where he also has no copyright over part of the data that goes into creating the output, namely the massively large possible input situations.

[JuLieN]

If testers in this forum and other forums test Houdini and post the results and allow games to be downloaded is that breaking the copyright if copyright holder did not approve it first.

Please stop trolling.

If one don't understand the difference between posting a game and publishing an Engine analysis on a website for the most important event in Chess, then

Not specifically referring to the above but there seems to be some confusion here. The "personal use" concept comes from the music and video industry, where broadcast to an audience is excluded by the "personal use" term.

But video and audio is different to software, the output of a video/audio CD is the copyright material, the song, the film or whatever and you would have no licence to distribute the copyright material to others again and again. The output of a program however is not copyright to the developer, his copyright extends to the code and support data only. Thus Robert Houdart, or anyone else, has no right to prevent use of the program output in any way, "personal use" terms or not.

This *might* (I say might because I'm not a specialist of compared law, so my knowledge of the anglo-saxon law is very superficial) be true in anglo-saxons countries, Chris, but not in other countries. For example in continental Europe the copyright laws for software are exactly the same as the ones used for books and movies/songs. And in Belgium, where I believe Robert lives, the law is nearly a duplicate of the French one (Belgium's law is based on Napoléon's civil code, just like France). They are divided in two categories:

- moral rights (those are actually attenuated, when compared to those for books/movies/songs, but we won't discuss them here).
- patrimonial rights. Those ones are subdivided into:
* reproduction rights
* representation rights
* traduction, adaptation rights
* selling rights

In our case here, the problem concerns the representation rights. They are often defined as "the communication of the work to the public by any mean" (ex: demonstrating a software during a fair, conferences, and so on...). This right is only suspended for the "private representations, and exclusively inside the family circle." This is not exactly what this FIDE event is.

Other accepted exceptions are:
- analyses and quotations of the work;
- press reviews;
- broadcast to the public for pure information about the work;
- parody, mockery.

So the question is: is broadcasting Houdini's output to the public a representation of Houdini? I don't think so. An illegal representation of Houdini would be to let the public of an event use Houdini on public computers.

ok, but another example ....

suppose we write some software, a simple algorithm, it takes any page of text, extracts the 1st, 13th, 25th, 19th etc etc according to a stored formula, 37th word and concatenates them into a sentence.

output = blaha blahb blahz la di da

My contention is that we have copyright over the program but not over the output. Simplistically we have:

program operates on [huge sample of all the world's texts] and outputs a string of data according to an algorithm.

Likewise, chess program operates on [huge sample of possible chess positions] and outputs a string of data according to an algorithm.

In neither case can the programmer predict the output data string, because he cannot personally deal with all the possible input situations. The programmer cannot lay copyright claim over a huge subset of possible output data strings that he doesn't know about and can't predict and where he also has no copyright over part of the data that goes into creating the output, namely the massively large possible input situations.

Yes, you are right. Kant proposed a simple philosophical tool to see if an idea is right or wrong: universalization. To check if an idea is absurd or not, push it to its limits. Here, for instance, we could generalize your program in order to produce a totally random (in length and content) string of characters. If this result could be copyrighted then we could claim a copyright over any future book or article (because we could say that it was produced using our software).

But here the questions was legally even simpler: the question is not "Does the FIDE has the right to publish Houdini's output to the public", but more exactly "does the FIDE has the right to produce a public output with Houdini?" And the answer to this second question is "legally, yes". Although it depends on Houdini's user license that the FIDE agreed to. Maybe Robert Houdard specifically forbids to publish Houdini's outputs in public places?