I believe it was in one of Jon Speelman's endgame books that I first read:

"Plagiarize
Let no one else's work evade your eyes, 
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes, 
So don't shade your eyes, 
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize... 
Only be sure always to call it please research."

Glad I made you laugh! But for better or worse, that is the reality of the situation. Plagiarism is not a legal concept.

Hang on: copyright laws (in the USA, at least) don't protect against plagiarism, which is an academic tradition. One can plagiarize without breaking the law.

I don't think that anyone insinuated copyright infringement had taken place (I certainly didn't mean to), more that it seems odd to be doing this in the Chesspub forum instead of emailing the publisher and informing them of the error(s).

No, I haven't seen any copyright issues in this forum, but I will be vigilant to delete any clear breaches of copyright law. 

In the US, one can often cite several pages without breaking copyright laws. This is a critique, and so the laws are a bit more relaxed. Stefan isn't trying to profit from copying and pasting.

From the US Copyright office:

Quote:

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html#howmuch


Being a victim is not reason enough to break the law, but there is quite a bit of leeway regarding the amount that can be posted in a review or critique of another work.

ErictheRed wrote on 02/21/14 at 14:28:32:

It is a radical step for me to publish copyrighted material without permission, yet it seems justified by the circumstances. Crediting properly is a serious matter for professional authors. - I've spent almost two months with Shaw's book, mainly analyzing concrete variations. I am aware that the visitors of this site are overwhelmingly interested in "hard theory", not in a debate of editorial accuracy or copyright issues. But when a poll on the "Book of the Year" contest in the ChessPub isn't the right moment to discuss minimum standards for opening books, this moment will never come. The ChessPub is still, with all its ills, the place in the web with the liveliest discussion about opening books, and some fine authors are among the regular visitors and contributors. 

So I have chosen, in this book's case, to focus not on hard analysis, but on editorial standards. When an author like Shaw spends five years on writing an opening book like this one, why can't he spend an extra week on getting the "basics" right: sources, quotations and so on. And why must a chess book look like a phone book? Some photos and a bit of history would greatly improve the fun.  

If you believe that it is a minor sin to misquote in the way shown above, where do you draw the line? Could it still be regarded as a case of sloppiness, if there are "only" 30 of such instances? Would 100 be required to cross the red line? 

On page 435 of his book, Shaw claims to have found a refutation of the King's Bishop Gambit 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Bc4, starting with 3...Nc6!. Says Shaw:

Quote:

Believe it or not: after this introduction, raising the curiousity of his readers, Shaw stops abruptly and avoids to "reveal" more about those earlier sources. Sure, this kind of pointless writing is not a punishable crime...

Stefan Buecker wrote on 02/21/14 at 14:16:05:


I'll change my own post--I assume that was directed at me.  I would like to understand what the main source of your personal grievance is, as writing "with compensation" instead of "plus over equals" seems like a very minor error and not worthy of scanning and posting copyrighted material for everyone to see.

Careful readers who compare Shaw's take on this line with my own will notice that he has misrepresented my evaluations, again, thus creating the impression that his analysis came to a different result. Does this justify my publishing of "copyrighted" material? In my opinion: yes, it does. Look, Shaw doesn't quote properly, he doesn't respect my copyright. No need for me to take his own copyright on page 85 overly serious. 

(Btw, I've voted for Playing the French by Ntirlis/Aagaard.)