David Levy responds to Chessbase's response to ICGA verdict

[Jeremy Bernstein]

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7899

jb

[hyatt]

Only the first half. Rest has already been written/reviewed by those of us involved. No idea when it will appear however.. All was finalized over the weekend. David was spoon-fed questions 2-3 at a time for a couple of weeks...

My assessment was that Chris/Ed were the primary "questioners" based on particular lines of questioning that they have raised on the RF, as well as a couple of "quirks in writing/spelling" that are well-known...

[JcMaTe]

Nice and clear.
the only thing I hear is that the dog on the other side started to bark!

[Uly]

ChessBase: David, do you believe that the ICGA has conclusively proved that Vasik Rajlich copied actual code (as opposed to ideas and algorithmic techniques) from the Fruit program?

David Levy: At the outset I wish to make it clear that this is not an issue about verbatim copying.

[...]

David Levy: [...] while the conclusion of the ICGA investigation was that a lot of code was copied.

He can't even agree with himself jumping back and forth between "no copied code but derivative" to "a lot of code was copied"

[hyatt]

That's because you don't WANT to understand. You see that extra word "verbatim" in front of copied? Copyright law refers to both "literal copying" (which could be called verbatim copying) and "non-literal copying." David wasn't contradicting himself, you just read what you want to read as opposed to what he ACTUALLY wrote...

verbatim: adjective: Using exactly the same words; corresponding word for word. Vas had to translate to bitboards, as David CLEARLY mentioned...

[BB+]

The phrase "nonliteral code copying" or "nonliteral copying of code" is not exactly common (the preference indeed seems to be to drop "code" when talking about "nonliteral copying", or to say "copying of nonliteral elements"), but it does get used occasionally (perhaps in more colloquial settings). For instance, pages 5ff of this 2011 PDF.

Literal and Nonliteral Copying
In the beginning, you’ll need to consider and determine the type of copying at issue: is it literal or nonliteral copying of the code and/or one or several of the more conceptual elements identified above? Literal copying might involve the direct copying of source or object code in the same programming language or the wholesale borrowing of a screen display. Nonliteral copying might inhabit the netherworld of non-literal elements, such as a program’s structure and fundamental essence or it could involve code paraphrasing in a different programming language.

Some of these concepts are illustrated by Marketing Technology Solutions Inc. v. Medizine LLC, an unpublished decision from the Southern District of New York. No. 09 Civ. 8122 (LMM), 2010 WL 2034404 (S.D.N.Y. May 18, 2010) unpublished). The Medizine court was faced with allegations of literal and nonliteral copying of code. [...]

If nothing else, I'd say that most persons would understand "nonliteral code copying" if the phrase were used, whereas something like "original at the source code level" seems much more opaque. The corresponding phrase when talking about books would probably be "nonliteral copying of text", which again I'd agree is suboptimal, but the reader should be able to discern what is meant.

In the case at hand, juxtaposing two snippets from Levy's comments and implying there is a contradiction seems a bit unwarranted. In particular, Levy's first comment continues by enlarging on the "copying" issue, while his second comment is intertwined with other copying aspects. I do agree that the second answer could be more pedantically strained, though the question itself tends to the sloppiness in language, in that it seems to want to define "derivative" quantitatively merely in terms of (literal) "code". Perhaps Levy should have said "derived" rather than "copied", or just not used the word "code" at all, though I'd have to agree with Bob that at this point the context and intent should be clear to most.

[JcMaTe]

I though the part 2 will be ready for today .. or they are thinking something else?

[Damir Desevac]

Well, they are thinking of what kind of gibberish, they are going to make up this time, so that Ed and Chris will have something to think about...

[hyatt]

Are you having problems choosing on which side of the fence you are on today? You have been critical of the ICGAs evidence and report on CCC, yet now you are critical of ChessBase? Wouldn't your arguments hold more weight if they were always based on the same point of view, rather than bouncing around???

[Jeremy Bernstein]

Part 2: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7908