25 January 2014

Making Money from Chess960?

This week I announced on my main blog that I'm Gone Fishing, at least for a few weeks. I don't have the time for a proper chess960 post either. What to blog about? My tried-and-true method is to use a picture. The only problem is that chess960 doesn't lend itself to easy imagery. While I was scrolling Google Images, looking for an idea, I noticed the following.


http://www.chesscreator.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Chess960.jpg

'That looks familiar', I thought, then compared it with my file c960strt.zip, available under 'RESOURCES: SPs & Twins' on the right sidebar.

The snippet in the image is indeed identical to the equivalent portion of my own file. The file was originally prepared more than five years ago for my main blog, documented in another blog post, A Database of Chess960 Start Positions.

It turns out that the file is being sold as a PDF from a page whose image I've captured on the left. Another snippet of the file is visible in the upper left corner of the page's body. The page is titled Chess book Fischer Randon chess 960 chess960 FRC Fischerandom | ChessCreator.com. ('Fischer Randon'?), and the book lists for 'Price: $1.99', marked down from $2.99.

The description starts, 'This is a 16 page reference e-book (PDF) featuring all possible Fischer Random chess 960 starting positions.' A 16-page book would have 60 chess960 positions per page in the book.

The web page also mentions,

Popular products on ChessCreator:
- Set of chess Bookmarks
- Ultimate chess puzzles no.1
- Fischer Random chess960

That last link points to the same 'Fischer Randon' page. It's hard to believe that chess960 is a popular product, but so it says. My own online copy of the file is downloaded by visitors less than once a day.

I don't mind someone giving away my material. I am, after all, giving it away myself. Charging for it is another matter. And how about some attribution?

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