Plagiary, CGF view

[cesczx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Chen Zhixing)]

Hello all,
   Here is an issue about the plagiary from the Computer Go Forum (CGF). 
                                                Chen Zhixing
                                                March 15, 1999

The CGF View of the FOST's Announcement

On February 17th, 1999, FOST announced the outcome of the investigation
into plagiarism at the 4th FOST Cup in 1998. This announcement was sent
to all participants of this tournament.

CGF (Computer Go Forum) is an interest group for computer Go. It was 
founded in 1995 and has about 60 members, including many researchers, 
programmers, and hobbyists with an interest in the field.

CGF has recognized the significance of the FOST Cup and has cooperated
with the tournament organization from the first tournament held in 1995 
to the fourth tournament held last year. However, CGF has serious doubts 
about the way FOST has solved the issue of plagiarism in the 4th FOST Cup
and has decided to terminate its cooperation.

We feel that the accused have been treated unfairly. If we do not take 
any action, the future of computer Go might be in jeopardy.  Therefore, we
must publish our view on this issue.

1. Background

First, we will briefly review the issue for good understanding.  It all 
started with Mr. Chen's claim that SilverIgo and Hamlet might be partial
copies of the HandTalk program.  More precicely, Hamlet was charged with 
plagiarism, while there were serious suspicions against SilverIgo.

HandTalk is the Go program that ended in first place at all previous FOST 
Cup tournaments. ( Note: HandTalk was renamed Gomate at the 4th FOST Cup. ) 
SilverIgo and Hamlet took 1st and 2nd place respectively at the 4th FOST 
Cup.

In response to the accusation, FOST organized an investigating committee 
( called "Special Committee" ) which consisted of 4 CGF members, 3 secretaries
(one from FOST and two from Koei Co.) and Mr. Erikawa (the chief director 
of FOST and the president of Koei Co.) as an observer.  This committee 
started the investigation based on evidence provided by Mr. Chen.

During the investigation, CGF committee members became seriously 
concerned about the unfair treatment of the accused by FOST.  FOST never
gave the Hamlet team a chance to defence itself against the charges and 
reached a verdict quickly, removing Hamlet from the results table.

SilverIgo's situation is even more complecated.  The company which originally
developed SilverIgo was closed down after the 4th FOST Cup and part of the
programming team has moved to a national research center called KCC(Korean 
Computer Center).  

The SilverIgo team claimed innocence and has submitted the EXE file used at
the 4th FOST Cup for investigation.  However, FOST has refused to further 
look into the matter despite earlier promises.  It demanded that SilverIgo 
renounces its achievements at the 4th FOST Cup.

A second point here is the unavailabiltiy of the SilverIgo version that 
participated in the 3rd FOST Cup.  FOST thought it very strange that the
program files of a program that was released commercially were not available
for investigation.  According to the SilverIgo developers, they started
a new project for the 4th FOST Cup which was completely independent of 
the SilverIgo commercial version.  They stated their innocence and have
demanded repeatedly to be shown the reasons for the suspicions. However,
these requests have been ignored by FOST.

FOST's attitude to the matter has been to eliminate the results of Hamlet 
and SilverIgo at the 3rd and (especially) the 4th FOST Cup without a
thorough and fair investigation.  Furthermore, FOST has demanded that 
both programs refrain from participating in the next FOST Cup, claiming 
that the programs will stay suspicous.

The CGF board has judged that it is hard for the CGF to continue further 
cooperation with FOST since it is failed to remain neutral. On December 
17th 1998, we informed of our decision and all CGF members left 
the investigating committee on the same day.  Since then, Mr. Erikawa has 
been in charge of the committee.

FOST has continued to refuse SilverIgo's requests for an investigation of
the EXE file used in the 4th FOST Cup and has finally announced the 
decision of the investigating committee on Februaury 17th.


2. Credibility of the FOST's announcement

As stated above, we (the CGF members in the committee ) regard it most 
important to establish a fair procedure of investigation before attempting 
to evaluate the evidence submitted by Mr. Chen.

FOST has announced that the evidence has been examined carefully and that
the investigation was carried out in a strictly neutral and fair manner. 
We do not think that this has been the case and we feel that we must 
point this out to you.

We also do not agree with FOST's argument that there is no point in 
investigating the EXE file of the SilverIgo program because it is impossible 
to prove if this is the same program that participated in the 4th FOST Cup. 
SilverIgo has also sent a copy of the EXE file to a referee ( a member of 
CGF) for investigation.  The referee has checked whether the program was 
able to reproduce the game records of the games played by SilverIgo at the 
FOST Cup. The program submitted to us played exactly the same moves as the 
program used in the FOST Cup.  We feel that this enough ground to further 
investigate the matter using this EXE file.

March 12th, 1999


CGF Chair,
Noriaki Sanechika

P.S.:  This matter is very complicated and there are many different 
aspects and viewpoints.  We feel a strong responsibilty of presenting 
our view of the matter to you.  Please feel free to ask any questions.
 
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