Copyright theft or legitimate criticism? That’s the big question in the poker world this week after Zenith Poker founder, Thomas Pinnock, gave away other poker coaching sites’ expensive PFR secrets while blasting the opposition in a YouTube video…
@Thomas_Pinnock_ and @ZenithPoker recently posted stolen material from my courses knowingly on their youtube. Don't care about the critique, but it's horrible form to steal from other educators.@out_of_position @PokerCoaching_ @UpswingPoker @2PokerGuys
— AlvinTeachesPoker (@ALteachespoker) May 27, 2021
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Zenith Poker’s ‘Fair Use’ of material rivaling poker sites
In his livestreamed video, entitled ‘Evaluating Popular Preflop Charts – Poker Pro Reacts’, the Zenith Poker founder Pinnock took aim at the Pre-Flop Range charts on offer from a number of sites. Range Converter, Upswing Poker, BluffTheSpot and AlTeachesPoker’s ‘Overnight Monster’ course are all under the microscope.
His approach was met by some seriously harsh criticism.
“It’s super, super fucked that you share counterfeit / stolen material from other schools,” wrote Alvin Lau, the “Al” behind one of the main sites Pinnock targeted.
Lau added: “Like it’s one thing to have zero people care about your channel and need to get some hype, it’s another thing to be outright thieves.
That was met by a simple reply from the Zenith Poker founder with a link to Wikipedia, and its section on ‘Fair Use’. It explains when, where and how copyright material can be used without permission.
Lau responded to that with, “It’s not fair use since you knowingly received stolen merchandise. You said in the livestream someone sent it to you, but then you told one of my students that you paid for it. I’d LOVE to see your receipt, Thomas, I certainly don’t see it on my end. Does Bluff the Spot have a receipt from you, too?”
Did Pinnock actually buy the material?
Elsewhere in the YouTube comments Pinnock says of the courses covered in his critique, “I bought them with the intention of reviewing them in this video,” which appears to be a highly questionable claim.
In a 2plus2 thread on the disagreement, the OP points out that Pinnock, “…says in the video he was given some of the charts by people in his discord. He also says stuff like “if you give me the Kanu ranges I’ll take a look at them” and “I got more ranges coming in” as people give him ranges/access to ranges on discord. This seemingly contradicts his claim that he paid for all of them.”
Lau tried to drum up support by calling in some of the other sites that Pinnock shared material from. BluffTheSpot copyright material clearly showing in the attached screenshot…
@bluffthespot here's @Thomas_Pinnock_ from @ZenithPoker showing a stolen version of your preflop bible for free on his youtube channel. pic.twitter.com/p3BOBCo0kJ
— AlvinTeachesPoker (@ALteachespoker) May 27, 2021
“This guy didn’t stand up for anything…” wrote juggler97531, adding: “ He almost verbatim pastes thousands of ranges offering very little actual criticism…He’s sharing huge parts of other’s paid content at the same time promoting his own stuff that he sells.
Potential legal steps are unlikely
The whole video is an ad for a platform where he sells coaching and also seems to have some preflop range browser behind a paywall.”
The person paid by Pinnock to do just that entered the debate. He stated: “I’m not going to comment on the actual legality of showing other people’s ranges in the video since I’m not a lawyer.
“However from an ethical perspective, unless the video was structured such that it showed a substantial amount of the paid ranges, or provided links to pirated versions of that content, I don’t have an issue with it. I’d consider it analogous to using clips from a movie when criticizing it.”
It seems unlikely that any legal action will be taken against Pinnock and Zenith Poker. The sums involved are likely too small and the legal arguments too murky when it comes to such material to make it worthwhile.
It does raise some very interesting questions and discussions over what and whose coaching tools are required to beat poker nowadays, but that’s a story for another day perhaps.
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