Chess magazines' coverage of chess literature scandals

[Roger de Coverly]

It's taken from a paper copy - the electronic issue is behind a paywall.

Supposedly the paywall allows non-subscribers 20 free articles a month. Even the Times gives a preview. I think a reason they used a scan was that the column wasn't on-line. I can recall searching for it, so as to quote a link.

If Malcolm or the Telegraph object to the use of the column in that way as a means of introducing a topic for discussion, it's up to them to take action.

[Jonathan Rogers]

On the 'fair use' point...

http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.c ... lcolm.html

... which is a scan of the entirety of one of Malcolm Pein's Telegraph articles. It's taken from a paper copy - the electronic issue is behind a paywall. Open and shut case of copyright infringement? Looks like it to me.

I am sure that John is right about this. It has occurred to me in the past, and surely to the bloggers themselves.

I have not been so bothered about any supposed hypocrisy here, though. They are not seeking any profit and not misleading anyone as to the true owner of the copyright. There is surely no equivalence between them doing this and alleging that Keene receives a very considerable sum for his column in which he uses the material of others with misleading attribution or no attribution at all.

And who is to say that one reason why The Times apparently does not even investigate it just might be that someone says "well, we just put this column in to keep the chess community happy. If even they don't comment on it, why should we care?" And I think that Justin made a good point on the blog (or was it KINGPIN) a while ago; that the mainstream media is happy to publish any rubbish about chess because "it's only chess". That would be worth reading again, in my view.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi O.G.

One publishing house paid another publishing house $3,000. That is petty cash.

That is what you get for persistent non-payment of parking fines or for non-payment of a TV license.
Apparently there are 70 people a year jailed in the UK because they have not paid their TV license.
How many people a year in the UK actually go to jail for plagiarism?

If you cannot see the funny side of RDK 'apparently' copying and pasting and this lot
running around screaming as if he was a latter day Charles Manson then I'm sorry but I do.

Hi Jonathan B.

"..... chess journalism in this country wasn’t very good. An opinion that I agree with..."

It is the game of Chess we are talking about.
These journalists are not wading up to their knees in daffodils and wandering over hill and dale.
It's a board game with 32 wooden pieces played on a board of 64 squares.
They use the moves of a game that was played and add in notes.

The choice of games (IMHO) is often wrong. I'd like to see more lower league stuff
played by 1600 players with blunders galore and hack sac unsound attacks.
And I am fed up seeing GM faces on the covers, I want a team pic of Rotherham's 3rd team (and their games.)

But the lad's who write up the games do what is on the can.
So where is the beef? What drove you away one articles? one interview....What?

When I complain about something or someone I give a name and a reason.
I never hesitate to name if I think it's guff.

Here:

http://www.chessedinburgh.co.uk/chandle ... handID=389

I have a good moan about David Le Moir because he does not give the names of the losers because
they fell into a trap. Strewth, if I worried about fragile ego's I'd have nothing to write about...it's only a game.

So you will have to name some of these poor journalists because on the whole I tend to think they do OK.

We need names and exerts from the pieces they have written that have driven you
to stop buying chess magazines. Put it up on the S & B blog and feed us the link.

But I don't think you will for the very same reasons why CHESS and BCM don't get involved in this mess.
You won't get sued (more about that later) but you will be needlessly stepping on toes.

Look at my mate JR from a few posts back telling us a famous GM had nicked a piece of work.
Did he name him? Of course not. JR knows what he doing. Don't get involved.

It must surely be time consuming going backwards and forwards looking at RDK's column
and seeing if there is a possible link with something he or someone else might have written.
OK it's a labour of love but magazines don't have the resources for this and not only that
they would have to be 100% correct else a lawsuit would surely follow.

What is the ulitimate aim here to close down both magazines and have Ray Keene thrown in jail.

Hmmm....RDK could write a book about being in jail, he could copy it from jeffrey Archer.
That would be funny. It would be likened to a convicted burglar getting his house robbed.

Hi JR.

Don't mention that lad's name. Honestly don't get involved.

Possibly one reason why 'The Times' have not sacked RDK is because it would
give the EYE bragging rights. The EYE does have a good gloat when someone is
ousted due to evidence they supplied. The Curse of the Gnome.

I've noticed that they have mention S & B as their source.
That is them slipping their 'get of jail free' card neatly into their back pocket.

"Nothing to do with us Guv, we got it from them."

[David Robertson]

I'll be interested to hear what Ray Keene has to say about my new book, to be published in due course.

It's to be called: Aron Nimzowitsch - A Reassessment

[Jonathan Rogers]

Geoff will go mad when you publish your next book Fischer's 60 Unforgettable Games *

* "unforgettable" joke is © KINGPIN

[David Robertson]

He'll be green with envy when he reads my bestseller on ECF politics: to be called

Fired from the Board

[Mike Gunn]

The authorship of many chess works seems to be a bit unclear. Garry Kasparov cites his helpers in the small print of his multi-volume series, but they don't appear as co-authors so how much/ what did they do? I've seen/ heard a rumour that Batsford Chees Openings #2 (authors on the title page: Garry and Ray) was actually assembled by Eric Schiller. In my 60 Memorable Games Bobby gives credit to Larry for the game introductions, so that seems all above board (pleased to say I have the Batsford edition typeset by John Nunn) but I was shocked to hear it claimed that Zurich 1953 was largely the work of an anonymous helper and not (everyone's hero) David Bronstein. Poor old plagiarists, they can't be sure who they are copying!

[Angus French]

I’ve assisted Justin in investigating the plagiarism and recycling carried out by Ray Keene. We’ve looked at just about all of his columns published in The Times from 2011 onwards. We’ve looked at about 80% of his columns in The Spectator going back to early 2001. In total we’ve examined more than 1,500 columns and found 140 examples of plagiarism (with more than 130 since the start of 2011) and several hundred examples of recycling. Ten consecutive Times columns, running from 1 June 2013 to 12 June 2013, contained plagiarised text. Most of the plagiarism we've found is of Kasparov’s My Great Predecessors series (though other authors have also been plagiarised). We’ve found that a quarter of the annotated games (37 of 148) in Part I of My Great Predecessors have been plagiarised.

This is some record. But plagiarism isn’t all that Ray Keene has done. Far from it. For further information see: http://keenipedia.com/.

Why is stuff like this allowed to happen? And could there be reasons - other than those given by John Saunders - why Keene’s activities go unreported in the mainstream chess media? Might vested interests play a part?

[Paul McKeown]

And could there be reasons - other than those given by John Saunders - why Keene’s activities go unreported in the mainstream chess media? Might vested interests play a part?

Oh look - a conspiracy theory is brewing in the collective unmind of the fruitbat colony.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Have to disagree with the line you are taking here, Paul. Why else do you think the Penguin has been able to get away with so much for so long?

[Jonathan Bryant]

... I've noticed that [PRIVATE EYE] have mention S & B as their source.
That is them slipping their 'get of jail free' card neatly into their back pocket.

"Nothing to do with us Guv, we got it from them."

Hi Geoff.
Firstly, I should point out that I said ‘journalism’ not ‘journalists’. That’s not an insignificant difference, I think.

Secondly, with regard to the passage I have cited above, I believe you are incorrect. Repeating a libel leaves you just as open to law suits as libelling in the first place. Also, The Eye tend to cite not so much S&B per se, but rather ‘Justin Horton’s blog’ or some variant thereof. Credit where it’s due in a way, and yet also rather irksome for some of us.

As for sending you excerpts from passages in articles that displease me ... well, if you read my comments here and elsewhere you’ll see that where I find contemporary chess journalism lacking it’s for the most part to do with what isn’t printed rather than what is. Kind of difficult to quote particular passages, then, but one example of the sort of thing I’d like to read about is an exploration of who actually writes the chess books that go on sale. I dare say that for many folk this would be as (un)interesting as plagiarism and the various other things that I’d like to read about, but still it interests me never the less.

The thing is, you and I have different interests. I’m interested in what goes on around the board, you keep your focus on what happens on it. Is it so surprising we have different views about this? After all, I have precisely zero desire to find out about the Rotherham 3rd team nor the games that they play for that matter - no disrespect to them - and you do. Equally, when you and I write about rook endings we do it in a different way. Not saying your way is worse than mine. Just that we’re different.

So no surprise that what you want from a magazine is different to me, then, right?

As for stepping on toes, well I suppose we agree to disagree on that too. You’re right it’s not always a pleasant path - I’ve been threatened with legal action twice, on one occasion I received anonymous hate mail (I don’t think that’s too strong a word) with threats of violence as a reprisal for something that I’d written. I don’t say that I want that to happen, but still I prefer to do my thing and if other people don’t like it then so be it.

Oh, one more thing,

What is the ulitimate aim here to close down both magazines and have Ray Keene thrown in jail.

I’m not sure I understand the reference to closing down magazines, but anyhoo, since I’ve only been very tangentially involved with the series that we’re discussing I can’t really answer your question directly.

I can say, though, that we’ve never presented ourselves as anything other than a place where people write about what interests them. Nothing more than that. So while I can’t and won't speak for anybody else involved with the blog, my ultimate aim is simply to do the writing and express a view. Can’t control anything that happens thereafter, or how people will respond to the blog, so why worry about it?

That said, you’ll see that Angus has given a figure for the number of plagiarised articles since 2011. I gather that since Justin starting posting on the subject the most blatant examples of RDK’s ‘work’ have ceased. So somebody somewhere seems to have wanted it to stop. Who knows for whatever reason or by whatever means.

That seems to me to be 'a good thing’. Not a ‘cure of cancer’ sized good thing to be sure, but a good thing nonetheless.

[JonManley]

I think that Justin made a good point on the blog (or was it KINGPIN) a while ago; that the mainstream media is happy to publish any rubbish about chess because "it's only chess". That would be worth reading again, in my view.

Justin's article is here: http://www.kingpinchess.net/2013/08/its-only-chess-2/

[Paul McKeown]

Matt, I think I'm as aware as the next man of some of the more shadier dealings Ex Acton Ad Astra. I don't think this tedious regurgitation of minutiae is the way to proceed, though. Keene is never going to have any further leadership positions within the ECF, following Tony Miles's accusations, which have been accepted as, prima facie, plausible by the chess community in England. And no one with half a brain is likely to sign a contract for the formation of a company in which Keene has some form of executive control, following David Levy's revelations. Until something new and major turns up, it's all just nark, which can simply be shrugged off. And it's incredibly tedious. Kingpin, at least, used to make the point with panache. The Streatham blog just bores on, regardless.

[Jonathan Bryant]

Part of the premise of the long running blog series is that the copyright owners seem to take no public action about their material being endlessly repeated as supposedly new columns. A reaction against the whistle-blowers would at least give them something new to write about.

Maybe, Roger, but I wouldn’t bank on it. After all, it’s not as if the blog wasn't getting the counter-accusation of “You’re obsessed with Ray” on pretty much a daily basis anyway.

Equally, the refusal to acknowledge that RDK is a proven plagiarist whilst simultaneously minimising the seriousness of plagiarism with a follow-up of "ah, I see you’ve used photographic material that is somebody else’s copyright: this is exactly the equivalent of what you’re accusing somebody else of and you’re massive hypocrites” is not fresh either. Indeed, it was once the favoured position of one Mr Steve Giddins, as I recall.

It’s a pretty good sign that it’s time for me to step away from that particular strand of the debate, I feel.

[Roger de Coverly]

Keene is never going to have any further leadership positions within the ECF

Two of the last three ECF Presidents have at least entertained the idea as a possibility.