No it was not.
It says in the article:
Organizers ... failed to persuade a federal judge to block rival website operators from broadcasting chess moves ...
The defendants also said that they would not simply be copying audiovisual content generated by World Chess, but displaying the moves on their own computerized chess board while adding commentary and analysis.
The ruling directly attacks the business model of the organizers and will thus reduce the chance of attracting sponsors in the future. Hence, it is not in the public interest.
Chess is a peculiar game in that the visual content of any broadcast ie players actually playing, is subordinate to the moves made. Nobody watches a chess game online for 5 hours for the fun of seeing the players think. That's like waiting for the paint to dry. Take away the advantage of broadcasting the moves with commentary and analysis and your advantage as a sponsor is gone. I would have thought the judge would have understood this and taken it into account.
Yeah, a business model is more important than the non-copyrightable nature of facts. Good thing the judge understood the actual law, which is not concerned with business models.
> Yeah, a business model is more important than the non-copyrightable nature of facts.
I fail to see your point. The law should be applied with a dose of common sense. The organizers are not barring anyone from the "facts" as you put it just trying to get a lead in broadcasting. The law upholds the rights of organizers of other sports eg football and boxing based on their peculiarities and in case you are not aware is frequently biased in defense of their commercial rights (one only needs recall the absurdities surrounding the olympics).
For years, chess has suffered from crises caused by lack of sponsorship for events. If this ruling serves to deter future sponsors and leads to uncertainty or cancellation of matches (which has happened before) then what good is that?
Your argument can be summarized as that we should ignore what copyright law says because the consequence of the law is bad in this particular case for certain chess companies.
That's neither a sane or reasonable way to make legal judgments. Can you show a sound legal argument why the judge's ruling was wrong?
FYI, there used to be a 'hot news' doctrine that might have protected the chess moves (and the FIDE made this their argument), but it's been largely superseded or overturned [1].
The copyright applies to the recording not the abstract information related to game state. This is similar to a radio broadcasting at a baseball game simultaneously with live video owned by separate company. Courts shouldn't expand rights to protect poorly thought out business models.
Take a sport like snooker and replace the footage with animated board which perfectly represent how the match is played. Would it be interesting enough to compete with the actually broadcast with video of the players and commentators?
No it was not. It says in the article: Organizers ... failed to persuade a federal judge to block rival website operators from broadcasting chess moves ...
The defendants also said that they would not simply be copying audiovisual content generated by World Chess, but displaying the moves on their own computerized chess board while adding commentary and analysis.
The ruling directly attacks the business model of the organizers and will thus reduce the chance of attracting sponsors in the future. Hence, it is not in the public interest.
Chess is a peculiar game in that the visual content of any broadcast ie players actually playing, is subordinate to the moves made. Nobody watches a chess game online for 5 hours for the fun of seeing the players think. That's like waiting for the paint to dry. Take away the advantage of broadcasting the moves with commentary and analysis and your advantage as a sponsor is gone. I would have thought the judge would have understood this and taken it into account.