Richard Sabey, 5 Apr 1995
Is it legal to e-mail published problems? What must I do to keep within the copyright law? I'd give the information on the author and source as given in the publication, of course.
My understanding is that you are allowed to reproduce any problem (provided you quote author, etc.) in the same way as you are allowed to publish chess game scores. The copyright law cover the comments that may be published alongside a problem (e.g. when the problem is quoted in a article) or alongside the game score (typically when the game score is published in a chess magazine). In any case, the actual practice is that problem magazines quote problems from other sources without asking for any kind of permission.
I am no expert on these legal matters, so please all of you people from the list correct me if I am wrong because these matters may be quite bothering.