Ishi Press and the USCF Rulebook

Dr. Roy Schmidt is mistaken.

My being the President and CEO of The Ishi Press Japan has nothing to do with my successful suit and money judgment against Ishi Press International of California.

I became the President and CEO of The Ishi Press (a Japan Corporation) in November 1999 while I was in Japan.

I have posted on my website at http://www.ishipress.com/tokiboto.htm the official corporate documents filed with the appropriate government offices in Japan. I am the Daihyo Torishimari Yaku, which means that I am the director who represents the company. The document itself is called a Tokiboto, which means Company Registration Document.

Dr. Roy Schmidt is a qualified translator. Although he translates from Chinese to English, he should probably be able to make out some of these Japanese corporate documents which I have posted on my web site.

Regarding the royalty to be paid to the author of the USCF rule book, it is to be pointed out that Tim Just will not really be the author of the book. This is not a novel. It is a compilation of rules which have been or will be debated, voted upon and finally passed by the delegates at one of the USCF annual meetings, probably in the year 2002. All tournament arbiters will be required to purchase a copy of this rule book. Most of the rules are already in the current rule book, which was not written by Mr. Just. New rules will be added to deal with sudden death time controls and time delay clocks, because time delay clocks have only come into widespread use during the past five years, which was after the current rule book was written.

Since Mr. Tim Just will not be writing any new rules except for the rules which must be added to pertain to time delay clocks, and since these are the rules of the USCF, an 88,000 member organization, and since there are a large number of qualified volunteers who are more than willing to serve on a committee which will write these rules free of charge, it is inappropriate that Tim Just be given a royalty for editing the rule book.

I need to add that the only reason Tim Just is getting this cushy job is he is a personal friend of Tim Redman, a member of the Executive Board of the USCF. This is obviously a corrupt deal along the lines of so many scams to loot the assets of the United States Chess Federation. I will suspect that there will be tremendous opposition to this if and when it is voted on by the delegates in August.

I need to add that it was Tim Just who got the motion tabled at the USCF meeting in Hawaii in August 1998 to introduce democratic elections in the USCF. Tim Just obviously defeated the democracy movement so that he and his cronies can continue to loot the assets of the United States Chess Federation.

Sam Sloan

On Thu, 25 May 2000 15:06:23 GMT, "Roy Schmidt" wrote:

Sam Sloan wrote:

[Replying to a thread where he was questioned for stating that the standard royalty for "such books" as the Rules of Chess was "zero."]

That is right.

I am the President and Chief Executive Officer of The Ishi Press, publisher of one hundred books on the game of go.

Sam Sloan

This is a patently misleading statement, Sam. I'm surprised at you! :^)

Sam Sloan may lay claim (not conclusively proven) to being President and CEO of Ishi Press, but he has not had a hand in publishing a single book about the game of go. He bases his statement on the fact that he was never paid any royalties for his book about Chinese Chess, which was published by said Ishi Press. But as I recall, Sam filed suit over the unpaid royalties and won a judgment because he had a contract which awarded him standard royalties for the book. There are other authors who have never received royalties from Ishi Press. This doesn't mean that standard royalties are zero, but rather that "Sam's company" doesn't pay its just debts.

I have written three books on go, all published by another company, and continue to receive royalties on all three books. Mind you, sales for such specialty books are very low, so the royalties are not much.

On the other hand, chess books sell a lot more copies than go books. If one assumes a low estimate of 20% of USCF members that will buy the rule book, then that would be over 10 times the size of sales of a typical go book.

Cheers, Roy ----------------------------------------------
my reply-to address is gostoned at home dot com
-------------------------------------------------
Roy Schmidt
Part-time Translator for Yutopian
Full-time Professor of Business Computer Systems
Bradley University


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Contact address - please send e-mail to the following address: Sloan@ishipress.com