Quote:

As I studied this I have to admit it is still far from clear. To say it directly: Empirical it's wrong. And it's easy to explain from Darwin's point of view: Survival of the fittest is not survival of the strongest. It is survival of those best fitting to an enviroment or being able to adapt to it (very often by social organisation). Or as we're talking about a war game here (=chess): Read Sun Tzi or Mao Tse Tung. You will understand why microeconomics doesn't predict economical behavior and macroeconomical development.

I stopped buying cd's and music when copy protection came on stealing my right to deal fun with my friends. Now I buy only music without copy protection. And I bought till today every chess book I work with (inclusive the chesspublishing files) and some more. Chesspublishing sells their files for personal use. The day they declare that it's forbidden to give to a personal known chess friend the copy of a page covering a special line or a copy of a single digit number of games, the day I will stop using it. With regret, because it's good stuff, but I'll stop. Same holds for private copies with every mental usable material.

CB has just shown first reactions. Via amazon you can buy a Fritz 12 version with 3 month premium mebership on their server for ~27 € instead of the official 49 € and the new chessbase mega pack is legally on the market for 202 €. If they continue to do good work for the community of chess players this community will continue to buy their products to reasonable prices. No need to complain for anyone.

Sorry for being really honest here, but one have to see the whole picture. I work with business develpment and bnig ones sees it as to low quality of a product if it is NOT on rapidshare, bittorrent and so on. So being there assures some value. Another argument is that many people have the opinon of bying what is really good, like music of leonard cohen i have downloaded at all but after i bought them all. Actually Leonard likes when many people listen to his music, and if there is someone who likes to hear his music and cant pay the 20$ for the cd, let him have it for free! Ok he is buddist munk but it still says alot about his passion and geniune love for music. Many chessauthors here are concerned about peolle bying their books. Well first i dont play dragon and if i would i would look at what has been played, and then find a bokk thats suits my moves. Then i need a recomendation from someone should i buy the terrific kosten book or go for Kasparovs book(fictive)? Well it certanly would help if EVERY chess forum where writing on both books to give opnions about moves and the different lines.  I would only buy a book from someone who shows big love and a geniune passion for the sport of chess, not someone who produces 15 dvds/ a year on all the big openings.

Take for instance Victor Bologans book. Of course a lot of people have downloaded it for free. BUT i think victor knows that if he comes home to a random KI player over 1800, he has ALSO bought the book. Because the best would like to have in real. I mean it is cool to see pamela andersson having sex on dvd but i would prefer to have the product in physicalform and not as jpeg.

Well dear athors of material, do you have the love for the game to make people pay what they can get for free? ell do you make new freinds on facebook or do you turn them down?

Remember people still buys MGP1-5 and they do a good profit on it. But i bought all the books, and then i wanted them as cbh-file. Should i pay for the annotaions(all games are free) twice?




metta

/Robban

ps. chesspublishing is not avalible on any torrents(if I were you i would be really concearned here about the brand), but chessbase cbm are. Which is the better the product? -Who knows there is only cbm

feel free to erase this post or parts of it.  .ds

Mortal Games wrote on 12/25/09 at 18:39:56:


I read an article, written a few months ago, that summed up the results of different studies of the effects of piracy in the music industry. The conclusion was that there were positive effects for relatively unknown artists, while for famous artists, the effects were negative. I wouldn't be surprised if the same goes for chess authors. Dvoretsky would hardly gain much from the extra publicity, as many chess players have already read some of his books, but "mr. unknown IM from a distant land" could probably increase his sales a lot by showing people, for free, that he is actually an excellent author.

The article also discussed the movie industry, where piracy is a newer phenomenon due to the large file sizes, and less studies have been done, but the conclusion drawn from the existing material seemed to be exclusively negative. The reason is probably that music is something you can listen to over and over again, while a movie is rarely the same when you watch it for the second time. Thus, you are more likely to buy a music CD after you have listened to a pirated version, than to buy a movie DVD after watching a pirated version. I suspect chess books fall somewhere in between music and movies in this respect.

Iphones can now be taken to the toilet even more easily than a book.

Not that I would know from personal experience, or anything.

It should have been £44.95 (50 Euros approx) or £89.95 (100 Euros approx) Apologies if a staff member overcharged you

Please pop in and get a refund sometime

Malcolm Pein

GMTonyKosten wrote on 12/22/09 at 13:10:12:

As far as I can tell, ChessBase haven't upped the price - it's down to Chess & Bridge.

Stigma wrote on 12/22/09 at 15:08:55:


Personally I would be very happy to pay extra for pgn files of book content.  I suppose the reason these aren't created is the risk of piracy.  But god, the waste of time involved in the current system is enormous.

BTW I don't think that entering chess data from a book into a data base falls under "fair use," however much they would like to keep you from doing so.  What you can't do is do that and then sell it, and I suspect that if you tried to give it away on any sort of scale they could get you for that as well.

chk wrote on 12/23/09 at 08:48:15:


If you access it thru the cb-databaseprogram it works (edit/Find position in/Find in www.chessbase-online.com)