This isn't about "casino chip images." It's about protecting decades of volunteer work and what is arguably the club's most valuable intellectual property asset.

The ChipGuide wasn't created overnight. Its origins trace back to the late 1990s, when Greg Susong compiled it in book form before moving it to the Internet around 2000. At that time, the ChipGuide contained roughly 16,000 chips. Sadly, Greg passed away in 2009, and his family donated the ChipGuide to the CCGTCC/Museum of Gaming History. Today, it represents hundreds of thousands of photographs, research entries, identifications, cataloged records, and countless volunteer hours contributed by collectors over decades. It is the club's crown jewel.

Being a nonprofit doesn't mean everything it creates is free for anyone to copy and republish. Nonprofits own intellectual property all the time, and they have a responsibility to protect it—not just for today's members, but for everyone who contributes in the future.

If the club simply allowed anyone to scrape and republish the entire database, what incentive would contributors have to continue donating their time and photographs? Protecting the database helps ensure that volunteers remain willing to keep building and improving it.

As for the legal questions, those are decisions for the club's Board and legal counsel. Like any organization, the Board has a fiduciary responsibility to weigh the costs, risks, and likelihood of success before pursuing litigation. Whether the club carries insurance or what legal strategy it adopts isn't something that should be debated in a public forum.