He visto esto sobre el web de inforchess.com en el Board de chesscafe.com y me pareció abrumador.
394-1 This was the phrase that was used by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal when he was interviewed by the American television news program 60 Minutes recently. He was talking about the tactics allegedly used by some of the major telephone companies to get customers. The same phrase, however, could be applied to the websites that take material written by and belonging to others. We are not talking about the occasional quote or excerpt; we are talking about entire articles, photographs and the like being lifted lock, stock and barrel, without the knowledge or consent of the publisher or author.
Several weeks ago, in our weekly e-mail newsletter, we mentioned that a Spanish site had taken a number of photographs from the ChessCafe.com Gallery Archives without permission. When we contacted the site and demanded that the photographs be removed, the response was typical: It basically was that the site has little control over content; that was the author's doing. Be that as it may, most, but not all, of the images were removed from one within a few days. At that time, we did not identify the site. However, the author using these images, one Carlos Fruvas Garnica, continues to display all of them on another page at the same site: Every photograph still appearing at http://members.tripod.com/aacevedo/_RaulO/…vas-capamex.htm was taken from the ChessCafe.com Gallery Archives without permission. Some would call this stealing.
Within the last day or so we received a disturbing e-mail message from Australian grandmaster Ian Rogers. Having seen the reference in the newsletter to the problem we had been having, Ian wanted to do some investigating himself. More specifically, his wife, an accomplished photo-journalist in her own right, was concerned that her photographs might have been used by other publishers or authors without her permission.
Ian came across an extraordinary situation: He discovered that the same Spanish site has been translating and publishing his chess columns that had originally appeared in the Canberra Times and Sun-Herald. They are doing so without his permission, without his knowledge and of course, without compensating him. Hard to believe? Go look for yourself: http://www.inforchess.com/columnis/rog000.htm . There is not only a list of his columns that have been pirated, they have the brass to use a photograph of Ian with the list of his columns.
In addition, we can read, in Spanish, the New York Times chess column by Robert Byrne, Lubosh Kavalek's weekly Washington Post column, Alex Baburin's Coffee Break column, and the list goes on and on. The site, «Inforchess», has, for our convenience, thoughtfully indexed all these columns on its home page, http://www.inforchess.com/index.htm . We are in the process of contacting Byrne, Kavalek, Baburin and others to determine if any of them gave permission to have their columns reprinted. We will let you know what they say.
We cannot condemn this kind of piracy too harshly. Very real and substantial money has been invested to create and publish chess journals of the highest possible quality. It is more than just unfortunate when publishers unwilling or unable to attract quality writers on their own simply take, without permission or authorization, material owned and copyrighted by others. It is appalling. And illegal. H.W. Russell [12-18-01]
394-2 I checked my records and found that I had been contacted by Mr. Julio Gonzalez who wanted to translate Coffee Break into Spanish and publish it at his site. I gave him my permission, as I normally do when it comes to Coffee Break – provided that people display my copyright notice.
I understand your concern and agree that the situation is serious sometimes people feel that it's OK to 'copy & paste' stuff which somebody else created. I once had entire contents of my 'Link' page copied – with my words, descriptions, etc. Fortunately, the person removed it when I contacted him. If the web sites which you mentioned posted anything without consent of the copyright holders, they have to apologise for their action and stop this practice immediately.
I will be watching this discussion with interest. Please feel free to quote my reply. Alex Baburin [12-18-01]
394-3 I looked at that site again and found that indeed the guy steals from me too – not Coffee Break (which is free), but Chess Today!
[Grandmaster Baburin is the editor and publisher of an excellent daily chess e-zine, Chess Today.]
Lo peor de esta historia, es que el Sr. Defez Gomez, socio del ínclito Sr. Gonzalez en la web menor http://www.inforchess.com, es un DEFENSOR NATO, de los programas de ajedrez ORIGINALES, y siempre nos está hablando de las ventajas de registrarse y tener COPIAS LEGALES de los programas comerciales.
Para que vamos a tener COPIAS LEGALES de programas comerciales, si son ELLOS (SR. GONZALEZ Y SR. DEFEZ)los primeros que no respetan los derechos de AUTOR;
PLAGIANDO los comentarios y traduciéndolos al idioma de Cervantes, y luego lucrándose vendiendo sus Cds?
Es esto moralmente aceptable Sr Defez?
sigue siendo usted el Defensor de los Derechos de autor? o desde que se asoció con el Sr. Gonzalez usted ya no opina lo mismo?
Este mensaje, me gustaría dejarlo en su web, pero parece ser que no funciona su FORO, seguramente será para que no pueda la gente expresarse libremente.
ESPERAMOS SU RESPUESTA SEÑOR. DEFEZ Y SR. GONZALEZ.
YA SABE USTED QUE QUIEN CALLA OTORGA.
Me he quedado muy sorprendio y también muy disgustado cuando he leido en http://www.chesscafe.com todo lo que ha ocurrido con los Cds del year Book 2001, yo como comprador de dicho Cd, estoy realmente enojado, en contribuir con mi dinero en esta farsa que han montado los señores de Inforchess.
No me esperaba esto del Sr. Defez ni por supuesto del Sr. gonzalez, quienes llevan mucho tiempo, en Internet haciéndonos disfrutar con sus articulos y noticias, aunque desde hace unos meses también he notado que cada día baja más su calidad, y si quieres buenos articulos, ha diferencia de otras webs, como pueden ser superajedrez y hechiceros, tienes que comprarles los cds.
Y encima están haciendo negocio, sin darles NADA de dinero a los autores de dichos articulos.
Esperemos que recapaciten pronto y no vuelvan hacerlo, o por lo menos den una disculpa pública de tan lamentable actuación.
Asunto gravísimo:
El ínclito Sr. Gonzalez y su socio Sr. Defez, no solamente NO PIDEN DISCULPAS, por el turbio asunto de no pagar derechos de autor a sus colaboradores, sino que vuelven a las andadas con la dichosa manía de poner música midi, en el home de su web, hoy tenemos la horrorosa experiencia de escuchar el «yesterday» de los muchachos de Liverpool, cada vez que entramos en su web.
Por favor Sr. Gonzalez, déjese de músicas y ponga buenos articulos de Ajedrez, y haga el favor de informarnos sobre lo que le ha ocurrido con chesscafe y los derechos de autor de sus «colaboradores».
Gracias Sr. Gonzalez y Gracias Sr. Defez