GLOC Information

[mithrandir]

As has been mentioned several times on the boards, and in today's update, we are going to start publishing puzzle content from VSP on the GL. In order to do this, we need permission to use your puzzles. So, we'd like your help in several ways.

Copyright Information:

By authoring content for the Grey Labyrinth using GLOC, the author grants the Grey Labyrinth unlimited free rights to publish submitted content in any format or medium.

To protect the Grey Labyrinth from copyright infringement, authors must agree that any content they submit is their own work.

This means that an author can't copy content verbatim, or with only superficial changes, and submit it to the Grey Labyrinth. Does this mean that if you find a clever riddle or puzzle elsewhere you can't add it to the Grey Labyrinth? Not necessarily. If you discover a puzzle that you would like to add to the Grey Labyrinth, you should rewrite it completely in your own words. If the underlying problem remains the same, but the actual treatment is totally unrelated, you will not have violated the copyrights of the original author.

If you are interested in a more detailed treatment of U.S. copyright law, the US Copyright office has a good introduction.

How you can help:

There are several different areas where you can help. The first is simply giving us permission to use puzzles you have posted in VSP. These can then be edited/rewritten/whatever, and published.

The next step would be going through VSP yourself and writing up all your puzzles. You can then submit these to myself, or one of the authors, for eventual publication.

The final level of participation is becoming an author yourself. For now, we won't be adding many new authors, but eventually I would like to let anyone that has been here a while (certain number of posts, date of registration, something like that) to be able to author or review if they want.

So, for now, I'd like to know whether we can use your puzzles, and whether you want to type them up yourself, or let one of the GLOC authors do it. If you do not want you puzzles used, just say so. Even if we don't hear from you, the puzzles may be used in some rewritten form.

mith

[This message has been edited by mithrandir (edited 07-29-2001).]

[Coyote]

Speaking as someone who has had numerous chess problems published, let me assure you--once a chess problem has been published, it's pretty much 'public domain'. Composers don't 'sell the rights' to their problems, since they don't get paid anything for them. In rare cases we may get a complimentary copy of the issue the problem appears in, but that's about it. (And most 'serious' composers have already subscribed to the magazine they submit to anyway.)

What we do expect, not as a legal necessity but as simple courtesy, is to give credit to the composer when reprinting the problem. Source information (magazine and/or tourney the problem first appeared in, and date published) are generally included as well, for people like me who like to archive such things.

I haven't been including the full source info on the problems I've posted here in the GL because it's a pretty informal setting and I didn't want to come across as a pretentious know-it-all. However, if you decide to include any of the chess problems and want more info on sources, I may be able to help.


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The moving finger edits

[Gomez]

I'd like to help. I'll send you an e-mail tonight with some puzzles you can use.

[mithrandir]

I'm hoping to do an archive of just chess puzzles (as well as other types that are posted alot), so any info you could give on sources would be great, Coyote.

[Gomez]

Ok, done it. I sent it to the address in your profile.