samsloan wrote:
On Mar 25, 1:10 am, Martin Ambuhl wrote:
samsloan wrote:
I can assure you that I have studied the subject, I know copyright law
very well, and I have consulted with the Copyright Office and the
Library of Congress in Washington DC.
I know what I am doing.
For certain values of "know what [you] are doing." Republishing Kenneth
Harkness's trivial re-presentation of Culbertson, a book of little
interest in its time and almost none now, republishing Watson's _outline
of Contract Bridge_, which even you suggest ignoring half of, a half
that is a minimalist rehashing of Culbertson's books; republishing the
unexpanded and uncorrected version of Watson's _Play of the Hand_: all
these suggest that you haven't a clue what you are doing.

Sorry, but you are mistaken. The book, Invitation to Bridge by Kenneth
Harkness, is not a "trivial re-presentation of Culbertson". It has
nothing to do with the Culbertson System. The term "honor tricks" is
never mentioned in the Harkness book.

Again proving you haven't a clue.
1) An evaluation technique is not a bidding system.
2) Ely Culbertson published books using point-count evaluation, and
after his death his wife Jo taught point-count evaluation
exclusively. "Culbertson" and "honor tricks" by no means
imply each other
3) Goren's methods of 1950 were nothing more than Culbertson's with
a short-suit count for distribution instead of the exactly
equivalent long-suit count the Culbertsons were using, but with
additional conceptual errors.

Rather, the Harkness book is one of the very first books to introduce
the "Goren Standard American" system of bidding.

This is simply a lie. You have been told, for example, of Goren's
_Point Count Bidding_ (a year before Harkness)
_Standard Book of Bidding_ (6 years before Harkness)
_Contract Bridge in a Nutshell_ (4 years before Harkness)
_Contract Bridge Complete_ (8 years before Harkness)
And all of the last three had gone through at least two editions (the
last through 4) before Harkness's book.
You have been told this; you ignored it; now you lie pretending that it
isn't true.

Further, Goren was a real champion. Harkness was not. Goren's writing
was extremely accessible, and has the virtue of being the real thing.
Why would anyone bother with Harkness's completely inconsequential
scribblings?

The system under
which Ace = 4, King = 3, Queen = 2 and Jack = 1 is introduced on page
72 of the Harkness Book.

And page 1 of Goren's _Contract Bridge Complete_. What's your point?

As I said, you haven't a damn clue. You don't know anything about
bridge, the history of bidding systems, or the history of bridge
publication. You clearly have no idea about what is worth reprinting.
You are attempting to fool the few people more clueless than yourself.