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This maze looks familiar

krazydad.com

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Re: This maze looks familiar

#71

Post by kd0amg »

dbaupp wrote: post #22
mkesper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under some jurisdictions (eg Germany), I'm not sure whether the output of a program is copyrightable at all. Your software, yes, but probably not the output.

What about if the program takes a variety of inputs which influence the output? (At some point there has to be a transition, since e.g. books are "just" the output of some program.)

For any book, there exists some program which generates it, but most books are not created that way (so we consider those books to be products of human creativity).

Re: This maze looks familiar

#72

Post by mcguire »

gegenschall wrote: post #42
mkesper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under some jurisdictions (eg Germany), I'm not sure whether the output of a program is copyrightable at all. Your software, yes, but probably not the output.

That's just too easy and doesn't make sense. OTOH one could argue that the maze itself does not fall under the scope of the Urheberrechtsgesetz because its threshold of originality is too low (no offense, it is after all auto-generated). But I'm no lawyer and this is just a spooky idea.

I assume it would also depend on whether there were other steps in the process, such as if he selects the mazes for his books, etc., from a larger number of randomly-generated mazes based on aesthetic appeal, difficulty, or other criteria.

Re: This maze looks familiar

#73

Post by Nursie »

cloverich wrote: post #34

I see literally thousands of mazes generated on the site, and (unless I"m mistaken) they are all simply generated output from a computer program. Its cool, but is it even possible to copyright something like this?

Why would it not be?

If I write a website and put thousands of mazes up, what difference does it make if I created them with a tool I wrote? Does the number of mazes created make a difference? Why?

I can copyright a computer program that is the binary output of a compiler...

Re: This maze looks familiar

#74

Post by snarfy »

jordigh wrote: post #25

Sure, copyright infringement, plagiarism, but not theft! Copying is not theft! We need to hear this more often. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU7axyrHWDQ

Not this crap again.

Counterfeiting money and causing massive inflation is theft of value, regardless of whether any money actually exchanged hands.

Re: This maze looks familiar

#75

Post by Nursie »

danielweber wrote: post #28
jonnathanson wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. More than one person's hands at the company are almost assuredly dirty here. Maybe not directly, but indirectly. No consumer packaged goods company, least of all a giant like Kraft, puts anything onto a box without many layers of approval and rounds of creative review. In this case, the buck presumably stops with the brand manager for the Mac & Cheese product. I doubt he or she would have even thought to ask abo…

As you say, it could be some freelance designer or artist whom they commissioned make the maze, and that artist committed fraud against both their customer and the real producer by passing KrazyDad's work off as his own. The company can't really double-check against out-and-out fraud. (I still think they should have financial responsibility, paying the real artist what they paid the supposed artist, even if they are…

It is your responsibility to know the license (or lack of) for materials you publish.

In a case as described there may be some sort of indemnity clause between the publisher (kraft) and the freelancer which passes the costs on to the freelancer under these circumstances.

Re: This maze looks familiar

#76

Post by rrss1122 »

I tried looking on the linked mazes page for a license, the closest thing (in my opinon) was a statement to feel free to reproduce for personal, school, and church use. I figure if I couldn't find the copyright notice, it's probably hard for someone at Kraft to find it too (unless that statement IS the copyright notice).

Does this necessarily exclude a for-profit use, or does that have to be explicitly declared? IANAL, so I'd like to know.

Re: This maze looks familiar

#77

Post by Liesmith »

hyperpape wrote: post #41
jordigh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From TFA: > If you’re gonna steal a maze, you might want to try stealing from maze book #47, and do a horizontal swap on it before you rotate it 90 degrees.

Jiminy cricket. Copyright violation isn't theft, but saying you "stole" a maze isn't a literal accusation of theft either. "Good artists copy; great artists steal." -- someone a long time ago "UMMMMM, IT'S NOT ACTUALLY THEFT!" --you.

It was T.S. Eliot. and the real quote is "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different."

Re: This maze looks familiar

#78

Post by dllthomas »

rrss1122 wrote: post #76

I tried looking on the linked mazes page for a license, the closest thing (in my opinon) was a statement to feel free to reproduce for personal, school, and church use. I figure if I couldn't find the copyright notice, it's probably hard for someone at Kraft to find it too (unless that statement IS the copyright notice). Does this necessarily exclude a for-profit use, or does that have to be explicitly declared? IANA…

This seems a good example of the actual original meaning of "the exception proves the rule". The fact that he specifically states an intent for it to be free in those cases implies that he does not intend for it to be free more generally.

Coupled with the fact that you automatically have copyright on copyrightable works, and that by default you need license to copy copyrighted works outside fair use and similar exceptions, I think it's clear that if these mazes are copyrightable and if the maze wasn't independently generated (both of which seem more probable than not), then Kraft owes him some money here.

Re: This maze looks familiar

#79

Post by jordigh »

Nursie wrote: post #73
cloverich wrote: post #34

I see literally thousands of mazes generated on the site, and (unless I"m mistaken) they are all simply generated output from a computer program. Its cool, but is it even possible to copyright something like this?

Why would it not be? If I write a website and put thousands of mazes up, what difference does it make if I created them with a tool I wrote? Does the number of mazes created make a difference? Why? I can copyright a computer program that is the binary output of a compiler...

> Does the number of mazes created make a difference? Why?

I understand that in some jurisdictions reproducing a small portion of a larger work, then it may constitute fair use. Bullet point 3:

    The amount and substantiality of the portion
    used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Of course, this is but one bullet point out of four, and the law is fuzzy, as it should be.

Re: This maze looks familiar

#80

Post by dllthomas »

cloverich wrote: post #34

I see literally thousands of mazes generated on the site, and (unless I"m mistaken) they are all simply generated output from a computer program. Its cool, but is it even possible to copyright something like this?

Given that he wrote the program, exercising creativity there, and (I presume) exercised additional creative activity manually selecting which outputs to post from the space of generated mazes, it seems likely that it's possible to copyright something like this. IANAL, though.
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