Go Books/Content in the Creative Commons

Go Resources
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A handful of go books and other content have been released under Creative Commons licenses. Below is a catalog of those that I am aware of. This post is a wiki, which can be edited freely. Please add more that you know of.

Books

Shape Up!

81 Little Lions: An Introduction to the 9x9 Board for Advanced Beginners

Relentless: Lee Sedol vs Gu Li

Websites, Interactive Content

Learn to Play Go Already!

Problem (Tsumego) Collections

GoGameGuru’s Go Problems

Commented Games

GoGameGuru’s Commented Go Games

Images, Graphical Assets

go-assets: various resources (i.e. images) related to the board game ‘Go’

Go Equipment and Trebuchet Photos

Software and Libraries

Software is generally not released under Creative Commons licenses, since these licenses are not designed for software and might not be most compatible with the aims of free, open-source software projects. In fact, the Creative Commons discourages it for those reasons.

However, a list of free, open-source software/libraries (generally under various other licenses) related to go can be found here:

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I never knew Relentless was free!

Why did this thread never get any replies?! We can’t have it languishing here!

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Yeah, this is such a good topic, definitely deserves a bump. Has anyone got anything to add to this?

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All five volumes of the Learn to Play Go series, by Janice Kim and Jeong Soo-hyun, are on the Internet Archive.

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That seems odd. Those PDFs are not marked with any sort of Creative Commons or open source license, and simply says all rights reserved with a standard restriction on redistribution without permission.

I believe it might be a case where someone has uploaded copyrighted material not suitable for the archive.

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I can’t find them anyway :sweat_smile:

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Janice Kim’s books are definitely still in circulation:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=leanr+to+play+go+janice+kim

I do not know of what specific archive you are referring, but if there is a way to contact them, then they should probably be informed of this.

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It’s the job of the agent or publisher to monitor for copyright violations. Since I don’t know for a fact that there is a violation, I am not sticking my nose into it. For all I know, the publisher might have an arrangement with Internet Archive.

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For all I know, the publisher might have an arrangement with Internet Archive.

Also true, but I am not talking about issuing violations and going legal on them. I think that a discreet gentle email to the archive owners (not the publishers) asking/informing them to check the issue themselves, is not harming anyone. :slight_smile:

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Even a simple email to the author or publisher notifying them of a potential copyright violation seems fine. I would do this, but have no idea how to contact Janice Kim or her defunct publisher.

However, in this case, I believe the publisher has gone out of business (see Good Move Press at Sensei's Library).

How does it work in these cases? I guess Kim still has rights in this situation and might care about it. If new copies of her books are still being sold on Amazon, but the publisher is out of business, is she still getting royalties? Or are those paid when the retailer purchases stock?

Publishing Go books is a small-market business, catering quite narrowly to our community. If we hope to see more quality commercial content in the future, we should be concerned when creator’s rights are not being respected.

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I would have thought that the rights flowed to whoever ended up with the publisher’s assets. Bank? Other creditors?

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I agree. But in this case, I wouldn’t be that concerned. I’ve been told where they are (internet archive). I’ve searched for them and I still can’t find them. Without knowing they were there, I would have given up much sooner. So the chances of someone finding these and using them rather than paying when they otherwise would have paid for them is very small. So I wouldn’t worry about it.

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