I have a confession to make.
I have criminal tendencies!

Here's my whole sordid story:

Over the years it's been a compulsion of mine that everytime I saw a chess-related picture, I right clicked and saved it to my hard drive. I've collected over 1500 pictures so far. One day it occurred to me that they really weren't doing anything sitting on my hard drive and I decided to make them accessible to anyone who might want to look at them without having to wallow through 100's, maybe 1000's of sites as I did. I have a dial-up connection and I use free web hosts. I've spent 1000's of hours on my site and I don't make and money with it or even seek out any recognition...in fact I prefer privacy. I've spend countless hours alone just uploading files, not a mean feat using a dial-up connection. I've been booted off of one free server for failing to make a .index file and had to upload my files a second time. I've had one host to reduce by half the amount of free space with a 30 day notice during which I had to scramble to find places to move 50 meg of files. I don't know why I bother..as I said, there's no gain at all in this for me.

If you've been paying attention, you will have noticed that I said I've collected pictures, indiscriminately (implied), uploaded them and archived them for easy access to anyone. I didn't say a word about copyright. When I was collecting the pictures, I wasn't planning on putting them online...I just liked having them. When I decided to put them online, first I had no idea which ones were copyrighted, plus I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of pictures and the magnitude of moving them from here to there. Did I ever consider that some were copyright, some weren't? Sure. I even mention it on the main gallery page. So, if I knew some were copyrighted, then why did I put them there? Beyond the reasons already given, let's follow my thinking :
I understand the concept of intellectual property. The product of someone's mind belongs to them. Someone writes something, they own it; someone composes something, they own it. Simple? If someone takes a picture, they own it. Well, yes and no, at least in my mind. If someone writes something and I pretend or imply I wrote it, that's very wrong. If I post a photograph and I imply I was the photographer, that's very wrong. If I use someone's work for my personal gain, such as using a photo in an ad, that's very wrong. By wrong I mean ethically not legally. I'm concerned with ethics far more than legality.
Since I don't display anyone's work, I don't consider it part of my site. I just archive it and make it accessible. It's accessible other places as well, including the source site, so the fact that it's accessible can't be wrong. I don't gain from it - in fact, it's a major headache. I'm also afraid that sometime in the future, the sites that diplayed the original pictures will be gone and, if so, then the archive will be a distinct service. So, far from seeing my archive as somethng ethically wrong, even if it includes some copyrighted pictures, I see it as a positive thing.

I state on my main gallery page that anyone who finds their material there and wishes it removed, to please inform me and I'll remove it. This is where I bow to legality. Beyond not feeling any moral conflict, I understand the legal aspects. This brings me to the purpose of this little essay:

Today, August, 12, 2003, I got a letter from someone from Chess Café, it said:

It has come to our attention that you are displaying photographs obtained from the ChessCafe Photo Gallery. These images have a yellow band through them. There has been some attempt to remove the band, but it is clearly discernible in the pirated images.

These images are owned and copyrighted by Edward Winter, as well as being covered by a blanket copyright of all the material on the ChessCafe website. You will please remove all such images at once so that no further action will be necessary on our part.

This was a most civil exchange, but something was left unsaid and something was lost. Chess Café, a really wonderful site, is also a somewhat commercial site. I say somewhat because, while they don't charge to look at most of their material (though they do charge for material in ebook form), they do run ads and sell things. Their pictures, to be honest, are historically interesting, but generally pretty lousy. While they are copyrighted,©, they aren't exactly intellectual property since the owner(s) of the copyrights aren't the photographers. But, with that said, they do have legal rights to the pictures. I'm not sure I understand the fair use clause, but I don't care: since they want the pictures removed, I removed them; if they didn't care, I would have kept them.

Chess Café has never done anything for me personally (other than present very good material which is available to everyone), while, in contrast, I mention their site throughout my own and even provide a link to their site on my Link page. Having pictures from their site archived on mine harmed them in no way, in fact, it probably helped them, if anything. One final thing left to be said about these now infamous-in-my-mind photographs is the peculiar yellow band. I feel incredibly stupid to learn that this was some sort of anti-theft device. I had simply thought they owned a cheap or malfunctioning scanner and wondered why they didn't repect their work enough to either get it fixed or to buy a new one. But the idea that someone would intentionally disfigure a photograph, as opposed to discreet watermarking, just so no one could use it is so foreign to my way of thnking, it never occurred to me. The photos there are not only intentionally, I learned, disfigured, but also extremely tiny. This gives me the impression that all they want to do is say, "Hey, look what we got! We'll let you see just enough that you know we have it but not enough that you can enjoy it." Why bother present them? Why bother looking at them? It seems they are less concerned with chess and chess players and more concerned with their own self-absorption. But that's just my possibly subjective opinion, so take it for what it's worth.

Here's where I must try to draw some analysis - I know it must be hard to believe that this well-crafted piece is being written on-the-fly. I made my site because I like chess; I like chess history and the culture that surrounds it. I don't care if someone takes any of my intellectual (and I use that term loosely) property, in fact I would feel flattered if I came across something I wrote on someone else's site. I'm not interested in any return for my considerable investment. Chess Café wishes to guard its © as if it were Fort Knox's gold, as is their right. It's just a philosophical difference.

Chess Café is still a wonderful site.