[Retros] Fw: Response to Volet (easier to read, I hope?)

[Pastmaker at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/8/02 3:02:33 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
DoubleExclam at comcast.net writes:

<< If the rule changes to 60 moves, a solver could correctly
 contend that the problem is unsound, because white has a perfectly valid #2
 even after the retro-analysis is considered. >>

Only lf the solver did not know when the problem was published!  

As I thought I explained, in legal matters, the necessity of knowing the 
prevailing law at the time an act occurs arises all the time in evaluating 
the legality of the act.  If the act was "legal" at the time it occurred, 
then that act, when committed, remains "legal", even if the act would be 
illegal if committed now.  

Similarly, if a problem was sound when composed, that problem, as composed 
and when composed, is sound forever.  Presumably those of you who think that 
a rule change can make a problem retroactively unsound would not welcome the 
notion that something you did last year and that was then entirely legal 
could subject you to prosecution because subsequent law has made the act 
illegal if committed today.  

"Unsound" implies a flaw, as in the case of "illegal".  If a particular act 
was legal when effected, that particular act never becomes illegal (although 
its subsequent commission may be illegal).  The analogy is perfectly clear.

I cannot understand why something so clear to our collective legal systems is 
problematic for problemists, who are so much more clever than lawyers.

Tom