Rybka Ban Reaffirmed by ICGA

The recent 4-part defence (part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4) of the banned Rybka program, published by Chessbase and authored by Dr. Søren Riis, a computer scientist at Queen Mary University, has received a swift response from the International Computer Games Association (previous article here).

Chessvibes has published a legal response to Riis' article from the ICGA president David Levy, and a technical rebuttal from Mark Watkins, a Mathematician at the University of Sydney.

David Levy's legal response says:

"...when Vasik Rajlich submitted his entry applications for the World Computer Chess Championships in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 he failed in his duty to include the name of Fabien Letouzey, the programmer of Fruit, in his authorship statements. The correct procedure would have been to obtain Letouzey’s permission to use the Fruit derived code and to name Letouzey within the authorship statement, thereby advising the ICGA of the provenance of the derived code. Sadly Rajlich did neither"

"These are the bare facts of the case and are, I believe, beyond dispute. It was upon these facts that the ICGA based its decisions regarding Rajlich being stripped of the World Championship titles awarded to Rybka and being banned for life from ICGA events".

Mark Watkins' summary is equally emphatic:

Throughout, Riis displays little knowledge of programming, let alone that of computer chess therein...Furthermore, he is similarly lacking in any knowledge of the relevant aspects of copyright law...He appears to apply a minimalist copy/paste standard to what "copying" might mean, ignoring any other creative aspects".

"Finally, he consistently refuses to apply any inferential capability regarding likely scenarios; combining this with an articially impossible standard of proof, he is reduced to the pedantry of repeatedly asserting that no one can prove that Rajlich directly copy/pasted Fruit source code, when this was never the issue to start".