On Oct 25, 4:45 am, wrote:
How the heck do tournament competitors and top-rated players get so
darned good at chess? Well, I can tell you that the really good chess
players (the one's with the 2200 ratings) didn't get that good by
accident!
They had to study & practice extremely hard to get to where they are
today. Most likely, they've studied chess strategies for years and
have played hundreds (perhaps even thousands of games) to obtain the
level of experience that they have today.
So, in order for ordinary people like you and me to get "good" at
chess, we would have to go through years of training, expensive
lessons, reading books, and trial & error.
I'm not claiming that you're going to become the next Kasparov over
night, but I can tell you that these strategies work.

http://chesscua.blogspot.com/#

The titles of some of the "components" of this course are
disturbingly familiar. Below, I compare them to some Fred Reinfeld
titles from the 1950s:

blogspot: "Component #1: Before You Begin ...Included in this section
are the relative values of the chess pieces ... Also included in this
section is an overview of chess notation.
Reinfeld: "The First Book of Chess: Elements, Moves, How to Win,
Values of Chessmen, Notation, Checks, Castling, Drawn Games, Pawn
Promotion, Checkmates, Fine Points, Openings" (1953)

blogspot: "Component #2: The Eight Bad Moves To Avoid At All Costs!"
Reinfeld: "The Second Book of Chess - The Nine Bad Moves (And How to
Avoid Them)" (1953)

blogspot: "Component #3: Playing The White Pieces"
Reinfeld: "The Third Book of Chess: How to play the white pieces"
(1954)

blogspot: "Component #4: Playing The Black Pieces"
Reinfeld: "The Fourth Book of Chess: How to Play the Black Pieces"
(1955)

blogspot: Component #5: Brilliant Combinations & Sacrifices
Reinfeld: "1001 BRILLIANT CHESS SACRIFICES AND COMBINATIONS" (1955)

blogspot: "Component #6: Practical Checkmates"
Reinfeld: "How to Force Checkmate: 300 Practical Immediate
Checkmates" (1947)

Some of these Reinfeld titles were later combined into a single book,
"The Complete Chess Course from Beginning to Winning Chess, A
Comprehensive Yet Simplified Home Study Chess Course. Eight Books in
One" (1959).
The similarity between this online offer and Reinfeld's books seems
suspiciously more than mere coincidence would warrant. If this online
offer is genuine, and not a spoof, I wonder if the seller is not
offering anything original, but has merely repackaged old Fred. If so,
and these books have not yet passed into the public domain, copyright
violation may have occurred.

Some of these Reinfeld titles were later combined into a single book,
"The Complete Chess Course from Beginning to Winning Chess, A
Comprehensive Yet Simplified Home Study Chess Course. Eight Books in
One" (1959).
The similarity between this online offer and Reinfeld's books seems
suspiciously more than mere coincidence would warrant. If this online
offer is genuine, and not a spoof, I wonder if the seller is not
offering anything original, but has merely repackaged old Fred. If so,
and these books have not yet passed into the public domain, copyright
violation may have occurred.

Are these Reinfeld books good? If I was to 'improve my chess in 7
days'
I would much rather go to the original source

This website is poorly done. I wasn't quite sure what he is selling.
It looks like some crappy ebook.

On Oct 25, 12:37 pm, "Inconnux" wrote:
Some of these Reinfeld titles were later combined into a single book,
"The Complete Chess Course from Beginning to Winning Chess, A
Comprehensive Yet Simplified Home Study Chess Course. Eight Books in
One" (1959).
The similarity between this online offer and Reinfeld's books seems
suspiciously more than mere coincidence would warrant. If this online
offer is genuine, and not a spoof, I wonder if the seller is not
offering anything original, but has merely repackaged old Fred. If so,
and these books have not yet passed into the public domain, copyright
violation may have occurred.

Are these Reinfeld books good? If I was to 'improve my chess in 7
days' I would much rather go to the original source

Reinfeld's instruction is fundamentally sound, though of course
somewhat dated, especially in terms of opening theory. Along with
Irving Chernev, Reinfeld was the biggest help in my own chess growth
from clueless beginner to a halfway-decent player 40+ years ago.
Checking www.abebooks.com, I see over 100 copies of Reinfeld's
"Complete Chess Course" offered, starting for as little as $1.00. So it
looks like you can get the original for much less than this plagiarizer
is asking.

This website is poorly done. I wasn't quite sure what he is selling.
It looks like some crappy ebook.

wrote:

The similarity between this online offer and Reinfeld's books seems
suspiciously more than mere coincidence would warrant. If this online
offer is genuine, and not a spoof, I wonder if the seller is not
offering anything original, but has merely repackaged old Fred. If so,
and these books have not yet passed into the public domain, copyright
violation may have occurred.

Would you kindly explain this point?

I believe, but I am not certain, that books written more than 50 years
ago have passed into the public domain.

Why do you state that these books, that were written betwen 1947 and
1953, are not in the public domain?

Sam Sloan

"samsloan" writes:
I believe, but I am not certain, that books written more than 50 years
ago have passed into the public domain.

Why do you state that these books, that were written betwen 1947 and
1953, are not in the public domain?

It's much more complicated than that. Basically any book written
after 1923 is likely to be in copyright forever. There was a lawsuit
a few years ago to fix this situation but the Supreme Court screwed it
up, so we're stuck with it now.

Paul Rubin wrote:
"samsloan" writes:
I believe, but I am not certain, that books written more than 50 years
ago have passed into the public domain.

Why do you state that these books, that were written betwen 1947 and
1953, are not in the public domain?

It's much more complicated than that. Basically any book written
after 1923 is likely to be in copyright forever. There was a lawsuit
a few years ago to fix this situation but the Supreme Court screwed it
up, so we're stuck with it now.

Can you cite that case?

What I have been reading indicates that anything written before 1978
(whenj the law was changed) is now in public domain, unless it was
registered with the US Copyright Office and the fees paid, which is
rarely done, and even then the copyright expires after 47 or 50 years
and cannot be renewed further.

There seem to be differences of opinion here. I just reprinted a book
that was written in 1932 and another one that was written in 1937, so I
need to find out what the law exactly is.

Sam Sloan

"samsloan" writes:
It's much more complicated than that. Basically any book written
after 1923 is likely to be in copyright forever. There was a lawsuit
a few years ago to fix this situation but the Supreme Court screwed it
up, so we're stuck with it now.

Can you cite that case?

Eldred v. Ashcroft, http://eldred.cc/eldredvashcroft.html

What I have been reading indicates that anything written before 1978
(whenj the law was changed) is now in public domain, unless it was
registered with the US Copyright Office and the fees paid, which is
rarely done, and even then the copyright expires after 47 or 50 years
and cannot be renewed further.

Only slightly right. Up until 1978, anything copyrighted stayed
copyrighted for 28 years. In the 28th year you could renew the
copyright for another 28 years, giving 56 years total. I think about
15% of such copyrights were actually renewed. Starting in 1978
everything became copyrighted until 50 years after the death of the
author, and in 1998 this was jacked up to 70 years. The significance
of 1923 is it was 56 years before 1978, so all copyrights from before
1923 were expired when 1978 came around. Any copyrights still active
got extended, and extended again in 1998. The driving force behind
the extensions is lobbying by Disney Corp, which doesn't want to let
the copyrights from the early Mickey Mouse movies (from the 1920's) to
lapse. So the presumption is that the extensions will keep on
happening. Note that that since 1998, NO copyrights have expired, and
none will expire until 2018 unless there's yet another extension.
Eldred v. Ashcroft tried but failed to get these extensions thrown out
as unconstitutional.

The other thing is that while only around 15% of copyrights were
renewed, there's not a reliable way to tell whether a copyright was
renewed or not (there's a Library of Congress database but it's
inaccurate). So you could find a book from 1930, notice that it's not
in the database, republish it, and then some dork claiming (truthfully
or otherwise) some connection with the original publisher says he's
the copyright owner and he renewed the copyright in 1958 and that he
is going to sue your ass if you don't pay up (but of course you don't
get to see the renewal documentation unless there's an actual
lawsuit). So the tendency has been to assume that all those
copyrights were renewed and anything from later than 1923 is still in
copyright unless there is definite info to the copyright. Lessig (the
Stanford law professor who represented Eldred) has been doing some
other stuff to try to get this fixed, but of course the media industry
that owns Congress opposes that, so it seems to me that he's getting
nowhere.

There seem to be differences of opinion here. I just reprinted a book
that was written in 1932 and another one that was written in 1937, so I
need to find out what the law exactly is.

You need to read Lessig's book Free Culture, downloadable from
http://free-culture.org .

Paul Rubin writes:
happening. Note that that since 1998, NO copyrights have expired, and
none will expire until 2018 unless there's yet another extension.

Editing error, was supposed to say "and there may be even more extensions".

Paul Rubin wrote:

The other thing is that while only around 15% of copyrights were
renewed, there's not a reliable way to tell whether a copyright was
renewed or not (there's a Library of Congress database but it's
inaccurate). So you could find a book from 1930, notice that it's not
in the database, republish it, and then some dork claiming (truthfully
or otherwise) some connection with the original publisher says he's
the copyright owner and he renewed the copyright in 1958 and that he
is going to sue your ass if you don't pay up (but of course you don't
get to see the renewal documentation unless there's an actual
lawsuit).

Thank you so much for your lengthy and detailed reply.

Now, I have another question.

Suppose that the great-grandson of the guy who wrote the book in 1932
shows up and claims the rights to the book I have reprinted.

Is it correct to say that at the worst all I owe him is a royalty, say
10%, on the books I have sold and, since I have not sold any of these
books yet, I owe him nothing.

Regarding the 1937 book, that was by a Soviet author, and since the
Soviet Union did not recognize our copyrights, under no circumstances
would I ever own him anything, even if he were alive today. (He died in
1942).

Sam Sloan

"samsloan" writes:
Suppose that the great-grandson of the guy who wrote the book in 1932
shows up and claims the rights to the book I have reprinted.

Is it correct to say that at the worst all I owe him is a royalty, say
10%, on the books I have sold and, since I have not sold any of these
books yet, I owe him nothing.

IANAL but I gather that in a blatant enough situation he could nail
you for willful infringement and collect statutory damages of big
bucks.

Regarding the 1937 book, that was by a Soviet author, and since the
Soviet Union did not recognize our copyrights, under no circumstances
would I ever own him anything, even if he were alive today. (He died in
1942).

IANAL but I think you are fairly safe on this one. There are some
enterprising lawyers trying to claim some of those old Soviet works
are really still copyrighted over here, but there's been so much
reprinting that if anything happens it will probably be rather slowly
and at worst you'll get some letter telling you to cut it out or else.
At that point you'd likely only have problems if you persisted.

The informational circulars at the loc.gov copyright office may be of
some help to you on all this stuff.