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Topic: The Arimaa license and IP law (Read 1228 times) |
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IdahoEv
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The Arimaa license and IP law
« on: Aug 17th, 2007, 11:44am » |
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(Moved from the Strategicon thread, where it was somewhat off-topic. But this is an important issue worthy of its own discussion.)
on Aug 16th, 2007, 1:17pm, IdahoEv wrote:| I'll be making one or two custom handcrafted Arimaa sets to give away as prizes. (I assume this is allowable within the license, since it will be at my expense and I am not selling them? Omar please correct me if I'm wrong.) |
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on Aug 16th, 2007, 5:34pm, aaaa wrote:
Like we needed any more proof, the above should aptly demonstrate the downright evil let alone ridiculousness of software (i.e. math) patents.
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The same goes for Gothic Chess, but it's even worse there as the patent is used for commercial reasons, while it's nothing more than Capablanca's chess with a different starting setup. It has even lead to the perversity of a Fischer Random equivalent of Capablanca having to explicitly exclude it as a possibility.
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I am no fan of excessive and inappropriate use of IP laws (copyright and patenting), but I think aaaa is completely off base here.
I am particularly disgusted by the perennial extension of copyright duration that happens in the USA due to lobbying by Disney (Copyright in the US is basically the current age of the "Steamboat Willie" cartoon plus 20 years.), and by the excessive use of patenting to protect trivial advancements.
That said, I think there is a place for IP law in the encouragement of innovation, and I don't think Omar's license even remotely pushes the boundaries of it.
A game is not a mathematical equation, and neither is a piece of software. If anyone thinks that, say, Adobe Photoshop is "just an algorithm", speak up -- a huge amount of creative effort and innovation goes into a package like that. It would be ridiculous to patent, say, the gaussian blur algorithm, but that's not the same as copyrighting the entire piece of software. Copyrighting the program is in fact quite legitimate.
But we're talking about games, not software or math ... aaaa's argument is somewhat diffuse and misdirected I think.
Gothic Chess is obviously a very minor tweak of a ruleset for a game (10x8 chess with an archbishop and a counsellor) that has existed since at least the 1600's. Based on prior art, that patent should get thrown out of any court in the country. Nobody has felt like mounting a legal challenge to it yet, but I say that patent is not valid.
Arimaa is a fully new ruleset, fairly unrelated to existing games, the product of several years of creative development on Omar's and Aamir's parts. Protecting that endeavor with IP law seems completely reasonable to me.
Moreover, Omar's particular license allows for extensive non-commercial use of the ruleset, including all sorts of educational and research use: it explicitly allows the kind of activity that aaaa believes is excluded by patents.
In summary, I agree that IP law is badly abused in the USA and the world at large. But I think Arimaa's license is not among the abusers, and is in fact an excellent example of someone trying to use IP law for its original intended purpose without draconian and irresponsible positions.
Quote:| It wouldn't surprise me if being patented has actually hampered the popularity of Arimaa, especially in the programming field. |
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I would be shocked if it had, since programming Arimaa for research, educational, and other non-commercial purposes is not prohibited by the license.
I have written many thousand lines of Arimaa-related code, all of which is explicitly allowed by the license.
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aaaa
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Re: The Arimaa license and IP law
« Reply #1 on: Aug 28th, 2007, 8:46pm » |
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I'm sorry to say this, but how compelling your post might seem at first glance, it completely falls apart the moment one realizes how obvious you have fallen in the classical trap of lumping disparate concepts under the moniker of "intellectual property". I strongly suggest you read this article. It may be a bit activist of tone, but it is very appropriate in this case, as your musings on copyright only serve to muddy the waters.
You say a game is not a mathematical equation, but the Arimaa and Gothic Chess patents are in effect thought patents and thus no different than software and business method patents in that it monopolizes activity that does not exploit specific laws of physics, but in fact consists of mental processes! How perversely proprietary can one get?
You have to ask yourself the question to what exactly one is exclusively entitled to by a patent on a game. Does it, without permission, prevent anyone from playing the game? Not only is this an unethical restriction of intellectual activity, it's impossible to enforce! Does it prevent anyone from selling an Arimaa set? What if it doesn't mention "Arimaa" to bypass the trademark (another "IP", which in this case I have no problem with as it can be easily circumvented, but whose disparateness must also be emphasized)? How does it differ then from selling a chess set which is "obviously" not restricted? Is it mentioning the rule set? What happens then if I sell a chess set with an obscure enough mention of the possibility of using it to play a certain other game? Are it the pieces then? What then if I sell a chess set with animal pieces without even hinting about Arimaa? Too conspicuous? What about tiles then with numbers on them for plausible deniability? These questions, that are meant to provoke one's sense of the absurdity of patenting a game, don't just go away because the license happens to be "generous".
The original intent of patents is to advance society by encouraging possibly expensive innovation in exchange for its disclosure, not to fulfill some sort of misguided sense of personal or corporate entitlement, which in the case of software patents is just parasitic land-grabbing at the expense of basic human freedoms. Software patents (in the general sense) almost invariably have not the sort of development costs that befall physical industries and, on top of that, most of the cost is usually spent on actually implementing it in software, which (suprise, surprise) is protected by copyright. What's objectionable then about somebody else making the effort to reimplement it? You can't call that "freeloading".
As liberal as the Arimaa license might seem in granting rights, its virtual lack of compatibility with many open source licenses, including the popular GNU General Public License (which actually allows commercial use), obviously puts restrictions on the use of Arimaa-related software on code hosting facilities, as it makes those wrong licenses unfollowable by potential creators of derivatives. The same even goes for the Wikibooks pages about Arimaa, completely anathematic to the reason patents exist in the first place, namely to encourage publication!
What's actually wrong if Arimaa is commercially exploited by others "without permission"? It doesn't make it go away for others. It might actually increase its popularity. Chess isn't particular hurt by commercial exploitation due to lack of "protection", is it?
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Fritzlein
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Re: The Arimaa license and IP law
« Reply #2 on: Aug 28th, 2007, 9:36pm » |
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Aaaa, I am not positive what it is that you think is absurd, but if I am not mistaken, you are arguing that Omar should have no legal right to restrict the sale of Arimaa sets and software in any way. If any law permits him to make such a restriction, then you think said law is absurd. Is that your position?
on Aug 28th, 2007, 8:46pm, aaaa wrote:| What's actually wrong if Arimaa is commercially exploited by others "without permission"? It doesn't make it go away for others. It might actually increase its popularity. |
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It is easy to argue after any invention has been made that the greater good is benefited by unrestricted sharing of that invention. However, it is at least plausible that would-be inventors are discouraged if they know in advance that anyone can rip off their ideas, undercut their prices, and prevent the inventor from ever making a profit.
The question is not whether Arimaa is harmed by unrestricted sharing, but whether Omar would have been deterred from inventing, publishing his invention, and spending lots of time and money to playtest and popularize it, if he had known that he could never profit from it. If he had never undertaken the whole enterprise because he knew he would have no rights, then the common good would clearly be harmed, because there would be no Arimaa.
It seems rather implausible that, if no game inventors had any legal rights over their inventions, we all would be better off by virtue of having more games. I would expect rather the contrary.
If I am unfairly characterizing your position, please explain what rights you think game inventors should have over their inventions.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 28th, 2007, 10:01pm by Fritzlein » |
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aaaa
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Re: The Arimaa license and IP law
« Reply #3 on: Aug 29th, 2007, 6:31pm » |
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on Aug 28th, 2007, 9:36pm, Fritzlein wrote:| Aaaa, I am not positive what it is that you think is absurd, but if I am not mistaken, you are arguing that Omar should have no legal right to restrict the sale of Arimaa sets and software in any way. If any law permits him to make such a restriction, then you think said law is absurd. Is that your position? |
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Yes, insofar otherwise no trademark or copyright violations are being made. It's the legitimacy of the patent I'm attacking.
Quote:| It is easy to argue after any invention has been made that the greater good is benefited by unrestricted sharing of that invention. However, it is at least plausible that would-be inventors are discouraged if they know in advance that anyone can rip off their ideas, undercut their prices, and prevent the inventor from ever making a profit. |
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We're not talking about the development of drugs here; there are hardly any or no return-on-investment issues to deal with in this case. The cost of designing an abstract game is negligent compared to making a business out of it, and therefore the same goes for any advantage that may arise from "ripping it off".
A better comparison for Arimaa is not with things like drugs, but business ideas people come up and to try bring to fruition. Don't you accept perfectly how in that case all is fair in trying to be the first to market the idea instead of locking out other people by being the first to patent it? In that case one would also first have to do a patent search himself. All that wasted time and resources that could have been put to better use by actually implementing the idea in the first place!
Quote:| The question is not whether Arimaa is harmed by unrestricted sharing, but whether Omar would have been deterred from inventing, publishing his invention, and spending lots of time and money to playtest and popularize it, if he had known that he could never profit from it. If he had never undertaken the whole enterprise because he knew he would have no rights, then the common good would clearly be harmed, because there would be no Arimaa. |
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You should ask Omar Syed only how much (money) it cost him to design Arimaa and whether it was the prospect of a patent that kept him going. Any (promotional) activities that came after it should be ignored for the purpose of justifying a patent since they didn't contribute to Arimaa's existence in itself.
Quote:| It seems rather implausible that, if no game inventors had any legal rights over their inventions, we all would be better off by virtue of having more games. I would expect rather the contrary. |
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The idea that games would no longer be designed if they could not be patented is frankly ludicrous. In fact one could argue the opposite, namely that one is discouraged from designing one if it runs the risk of violating existing patents because it in some vague way shares too much of a similarity with an existing, patented game and then you get BS like in the case of the earlier mentioned Capablanca Random Chess.
Quote:If I am unfairly characterizing your position, please explain what rights you think game inventors should have over their inventions.
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No one should be able to restrict what are in essence only mental constructions and people should get rid of the mentality of treating intangible concepts like they can and should be possessed like physical objects ("intellectual property") and instead should realize that they exist as a trade-off in order to promote progress.
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Fritzlein
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Re: The Arimaa license and IP law
« Reply #4 on: Aug 29th, 2007, 9:21pm » |
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on Aug 29th, 2007, 6:31pm, aaaa wrote:| Yes, insofar otherwise no trademark or copyright violations are being made. It's the legitimacy of the patent I'm attacking. |
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OK, it wasn't clear to me that you were only attacking the patent, not trademark and copyright. If I am not mistaken, some of the hypothetical restrictions (which you proposed as potentially "absurd") could apply under trademark and copyright law as well.
It seems to me your strongest case against the patent has nothing to do with the various forms of commercialization you mention, and that might be restricted. Your stronger case has rather to do with restrictions on games with a similar concept that aren't Arimaa but would somehow be prohibited because, for example, they use the pushing and pulling mechanics. That would be weird in my book. It would be like Hasbro, instead of having a copyright on Scrabble, actually owning a patent on any games with crossing words, letter values, and premium squares. That would tend to stifle innovation more than promote it, on the balance. The copyright is plenty, thank you.
Omar can tell you how long he experimented with a variety of similar games before finding a mixture of rules that was just right when played. Also IdahoEv can tell you how every time he invents an Arimaa variant, I am pretty sure it will play worse than the original. As long as Omar controls the real Arimaa, he'll be fine.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 29th, 2007, 9:32pm by Fritzlein » |
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aaaa
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Arimaa player #958
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Re: The Arimaa license and IP law
« Reply #5 on: Aug 30th, 2007, 1:42pm » |
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Don't put too much emphasis on the similarity argument. My principle is simply that there should be no restrictions whatsoever on what one can program with the sole exception of where it concerns copyright. Programmers should not have to waste any time examining patents, especially as they are often also formulated convolutely just in order to fake a sense of non-obviousness.
Given the amount Syed has already spent on this, I doubt he is in it for the money anyway. I think his patent is more a manifestation of the universal desire to have and maintain control over one's creations.
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