This maze looks familiar

http://krazydad.com/blog/2014/07/13/hmm-this-maze-looks-familiar/

by jozydapozy • 12 years ago

310 132 12 years ago

krazydad.com

woutersf• 12 years ago

Did you contact them?

yawz• 12 years ago

I'm sure his lawyer did.

bshimmin• 12 years ago

Reminds me of Roger Penrose and toilet paper plagiarism: http://web.archive.org/web/20050312084035/http://www.parasco...

JetSpiegel• 12 years ago

This deserves a submission.

"So often we read of very large companies riding rough-shod over small businesses or individuals," said David Bradley, director of Pentaplex. "But when it comes to the population of Great Britain being invited by a multi-national to wipe their bottoms on what appears to be the work of a Knight of the Realm without his permission, then a last stand must be made."

krazydad3• 12 years ago

[This is Jim Bumgardner - author of the maze that Kraft copied]. Amusingly, this comes full circle. One of the puzzle varieties on my site is based on Penrose tilings.

http://krazydad.com/slitherlink/sfiles/sl_penrose_b001.pdf

Years ago, I sought (and received) permission from Penrose to use his tiling on these puzzles.

jmaygarden• 12 years ago

How did that case end?

innguest• 12 years ago

Please do unto them what they would have done unto you. Not only do you stand to make some money but you'll be helping correct a bad behavior.

goatforce5• 12 years ago

You can save yourself the trouble of finding out the address of their lawyers by simply putting a Kraft and/or Spongebob logo on your website... They'll come to you quick smart!

triangleman2• 12 years ago

Ah yes, the silver rule.

ars11• 12 years ago

It's not that simple. It's not clear that the maze is copyrightable in the first place.

I doubt he has the resources to fight it if they choose to fight. He would basically be hoping they would give him a settlement just to make him go away.

Filing a lawsuit just to get a settlement when you can't actually fight on the merits is not considered positive behavior (although it can be lucrative).

dllthomas12• 12 years ago

"Filing a lawsuit just to get a settlement when you can't actually fight on the merits is not considered positive behavior (although it can be lucrative)."

If you can't actually fight it on its merits because the facts and law don't back you up, I whole heartedly agree. If you can't actually fight it on its merits only because you don't have the resources to do so, it's more questionable.

ZoF• 12 years ago

Heh,that poor miserable employee who probably thought nothing of copying a cool maze off the Internet.(Not to imply that makes it any less illegal)

That's certainly got to be interesting/validating for the op though (albeit simultaneously violating/annoying).

Definitely curious to hear how Kraft responds; if op is willing to share even more about something he shouldn't have had to deal with in the first place that is.

dspillett2• 12 years ago

who probably thought nothing of

Working for a media related company or similar he will have been told not to do that sort of thing, officially at least (it'll be in the company handbook which he'll have signed a document stating he has read and understood) - so yes if he is still there he'll get some of the fallout.

The company should have checks and balances on such things though, so they can't blame a sole individual and wash their hands of it without recall of the item and/or recompense to the creator they've copied.

jonnathanson3• 12 years ago

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 about the IP origins of the maze when conducting creative review. Nevertheless, he or she bears some responsibility as the owner of the review process.

Most likely this maze was lifted and passed off as original by someone a bit lower down the food chain: an agency staffer, a freelance designer, or an artist at the company. But there is virtually no scenario in which that person's contribution wasn't reviewed a half-dozen times by people with managerial authority. At CPG companies, the package is an incredibly important and borderline sacred thing. Nothing gets onto the package by accident, and as such, it would be incredibly difficult for Kraft to argue its way out of responsibility.

Another possibility is that Nickelodeon (the owner of Spongebob) provided the artwork, including the maze, to Kraft. This makes identifying the proximately responsible party a bit trickier, but Kraft still bears a burden. It would also mean that two companies, and possibly two brand managers, had eyes on this.

tripzilch• 12 years ago

Heh,that poor miserable employee who probably thought nothing of copying a cool maze off the Internet.(Not to imply that makes it any less illegal)

As a graphics designer you should have a basic grasp of these manners, and respect them.

chton7• 12 years ago

Hypothetical question: is it possible that they did not copy it? The author here indicates that the original maze was generated by software, maybe Kraft stumbled upon the same algorithm, or a close variation of it (considering the minor differences between the two)?

Obviously, this is very out-of-left-field and I don't believe it either, but it's not impossible that Kraft didn't plagiarise anything.

joshstrange• 12 years ago

Seeing how the author says he developed said algorithm and the maze is from Book #1 Maze #1 I don't think that's at all possible.

chton7• 12 years ago

That's a very good point, but maybe it was #1 because it was the default case, the simplest to generate?

hawleyal• 12 years ago

It is impossible.

chton7• 12 years ago

Mind elaborating why? I'm not versed in maze generation, but I am a software dev, and reinventing an existing algorithm does happen. It might be very unlikely in this case, but I'd just like to know why.

mkesper2• 12 years ago

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.

adolph• 12 years ago

Wait, the information you type into a text editor or draw in Illustrator is not copywritable in Germany?

dbaupp2• 12 years ago

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.)

runholm• 12 years ago

That can't possibly be that simple. Allmost all movies, songs, images and programs made today are outputs from programs.

mkesper2• 12 years ago

First result I found discussing the issue: http://the-digital-reader.com/2013/09/13/friday-fun-autonomo... US doesn't seem as clear as you thought, maybe!

gegenschall• 12 years ago

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.

ominous• 12 years ago

"What is a quine?"

krazydad3• 12 years ago

Highly unlikely. The grid design contains about 900 edges which can be set or clear. Their maze differs by 7 edges. Here's a statistics problem for you: What is the likelihood of generating a random 900 bit binary number that differs from another random 900 bit binary number by only 7 bits?

Then there is the choice of grid design (identical), entry and exit holes (identical).

chton7• 12 years ago

That's not a valid comparison for generated mazes, is it? Unless the algorithm was really just choosing randomly, some edges are far more likely to occur than others.

ejr• 12 years ago

We seem to have killed the site.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:krazyd...

dspillett2• 12 years ago

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. That’ll slow me down some…

And now the next maze to be copied by someone will be that one, and they'll argue that this statement is permission!

DanBC• 12 years ago

What's the offline DMCA workflow? Send an invoice for a reasonable amount, then sue if they don't pay?

logicallee• 12 years ago

Pick up the phone and call around until you find out what their limits are before some approval is needed, you can probably even explain what happened, and that you just want to invoice in an amount that can be approved, then just submit an invoice for under that amount, with a note that upon payment you will give a one-time license for the already-printed kraft boxes.

jordigh6• 12 years ago

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

jfoutz2• 12 years ago

Luckily, neither the essay nor anyone else in this thread are talking about theft.

jordigh6• 12 years ago

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.

DanielStraight• 12 years ago

We really don't. I hope you don't sincerely believe your fellow HNers are stupid enough to think that copying an artistic artifact somehow removes it from the possession of the original creator. We aren't and we don't. Which means this is just a matter of word choice. I can't think of much I'm less interested in reading than "You used this word in a way I don't agree with."

Besides, this usage of "theft" is not dissimilar from the already well established usage of "stole" as in "he stole my idea." If an idea can be stolen, it can certainly be theft to take the product of an idea, at least colloquially.

jordigh6• 12 years ago

Of course it's a common usage, but that alone shouldn't make it acceptable usage. Lots of disparaging language is common usage. When you use a word with a certain intent, it's the usage of that word with that specific intent that should be questioned.

I think we should all be grownup enough to recognise that ideas can't really be stolen either. We also recognise the value of copying ideas. If we recognise these things, then we should use corresponding language to reflect our intent.

snarfy• 12 years ago

Not this crap again.

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

wvenable• 12 years ago

I agree with your sentiment here but "theft of value" is just a restatement of the same concept as "copying is theft".

phy62• 12 years ago

At what point do a series of angled lines become copywritable? After two lines? Three? Can I copywrite two lines meeting at 67 degrees, and then claim angles 65-69 as like works? Can I then claim that your maze contains my intellectual property in several places? (And would you still feel your rights were violated had kraft taken two of your mazes and glued them together?)

Piskvorrr2• 12 years ago

It's a matter of arriving at the result. In other words, what matters is whether you used the original (and with what intent), not whether you arrived at the same result. Unfortunately, both of these are hard to prove.

Not exactly intuitive, I'd agree; see e.g. this: http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

(Oh, and it's "copyright")

icebraining• 12 years ago

s/copywrite/copyright/

With regard to your question, it depends on whether it passes the Threshold of Originality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality

cloverich• 12 years ago

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?

jordigh6• 12 years ago

A number of people have attempted to claim copyright on the output of programs. One of the most infamous examples is how Wolfram claims copyright over the output of Wolfram Alpha.

http://yro-beta.slashdot.org/story/09/07/30/2055221/how-wolf...

userbinator2• 12 years ago

This is interesting because a similar thought experiment that immediately occurred to me would be to consider a program that calculates digits of pi, sqrt(2), or some other transcendental number, given some user input --- basically, a calculator.

The program itself is almost certainly copyrightable, but what about its output?

These mazes feel like a similar idea to me - he even mentioned that this particular one is generated by a "fibonacci spiral", so there is likely a compact mathematical description of its vertices, and a PRNG (further thought experiment: what if the "randomness" was generated by a true RNG?) along with its seed that was used to determine where the lines appeared. It's an artistic work, but the majority of the "work" was done by an algorithm - he didn't manually draw all the lines.

phy62• 12 years ago

Does Microsoft own my powerpoints?

rtkwe• 12 years ago

That'd be a fair comparison if Powerpoint generated powerpoint shows for you without any work on your part.

Someone• 12 years ago

Not the PowerPoint, but likely the copyright over parts of it. Presentations may be self-running, embed fonts, contain graphics, or simply use templates whose copyright Microsoft owns.

Nursie3• 12 years ago

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...

jordigh6• 12 years ago

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.

dllthomas12• 12 years ago

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.

metacorrector2• 12 years ago

There was a project in the early days of the internet boom, a website was put up (in australia IIRC) with every possible melody combination (using discrete scales) along with a copyright notice for each one, so nobody would be able to write a song in the future without infringing.

even if there was no creativity involved and thus the copyright would fail, it seems (IANAL) that it might put the melodies into the public domain, since how could somebody claim you had no right to use a melody that you had already published?

ars11• 12 years ago

manually selecting which outputs to post

That is not the law. The actual work must demonstrate creativity, and a mechanically generated works of this sort do not.

"The U.S. Copyright Office has taken the position that "in order to be entitled to copyright registration, a work must be the product of human authorship. Works produced by mechanical processes or random selection without any contribution by a human author are not registrable."

kbutler2• 12 years ago

Selecting which outputs to post is not sufficient to establish copyright. See the copyright office's example of a piece of driftwood selected, polished, and mounted by a human:

503.03(a) Works-not originated by a human author.

In order to be entitled to copyright registration, a work must be the product of human authorship. Works produced by mechanical processes or random selection without any contribution by a human author are not registrable. Thus, a linoleum floor covering featuring a multicolored pebble design which was produced by a mechanical process in unrepeatable, random patterns, is not registrable. Similarly, a work owing its form to the forces of nature and lacking human authorship is not registrable; thus, for example, a piece of driftwood even if polished and mounted is not registrable.

http://www.copyrightcompendium.com/#503.03(a)

lifeisstillgood• 12 years ago

It's where IP is a proxy for rewarding the original creator for the effort gone to. Clearly Kraft's designer just found the first maze that was circular-ish that came up in Google images and plonked it down and moved onto the next rush job.

Kraft clearly nicked it, or where careless as to wither it was copyrighted, but we have now wondered into output of program territory instead of the much clearer area of did kraft just grab the first thing that they could find?

You won't succeed in suing them - so this is probably the best option he has.

ars11• 12 years ago

is it even possible to copyright something like this

No, I don't believe so:

jahewson• 12 years ago

Yes. While the computer program itself is a creative work, the important factor is that it is being used as a tool in an overall creative process. There are most likely aesthetic concerns which are contained in the program which are reflected in the output, meaning that it is not just a purely mathematical exercise. There may also have been some manual selection process in which the mazes were assessed for aesthetic quality - which counts as creative from a copyright standpoint, though this applies primarily to an overall work which is a compilation.

However, if the maze is entirely the product of a random process then the online compilation could be protected as a 'selective' creative work, but individual mazes would not.

Note that even if each individual maze is eligible for protection that the author doesn't end up with copyright over Fibonacci mazes, it's only the creative parts, whatever aesthetic tweaks (or manual selection in the case of a compilation) were made that is covered. So you could produce a very similar maze with your own program using your own creative decisions without infringing.

kbutler2• 12 years ago

In the US, copyright automatically applies to "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression". (There are some exceptions, like for US government works.)

"original" boils down to "more creative than alphabetical ordering", and "tangible media" includes pictorial/graphic displays.

So yes, the maze is likely subject to copyright.

However, there's very little "creative expression" in the individual maze, as an algorithmic result, the creative expression is in the inputs, resulting in a "thin" copyright - only applying to virtually identical copies.

In the specific case, Kraft's maze is a significantly better maze - also evidence of the lack of individual creative analysis in the original.

There's definite copying - the styling and layout are too close for there to be otherwise, but the creative expression in the original is so minimal that it likely balances the fair use criteria (nature of the work, effect on the negligible original market suggest it is fair use, commercial use counts against fair use.)

Not sure which way a judge would rule. Kraft is probably very unhappy with their illustrator for not just creating an original maze...

mcherm2• 12 years ago

Notice how he pointed out that it is copied in clear violation of copyright law. Then he did NOT follow this up with a cease-and-desist letter, or a threat of legal action. Classy.

Now I hope that Craft is classy in return, by contacting him and negotiating in good faith a reasonable fee for the use of the maze.

nmjohn• 12 years ago

If he didn't contact Kraft how would they ever be made aware of it? It's not like there was a giant company meeting where the CEO said "This guy. I want you to steal his maze design and put it on our mac and cheese."

It was 1 designer tasked with putting a maze on it that did a google image search and came up with that result.

That by no means exonerates Kraft, but it can be helpful to put things in perspective sometimes. I would be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, that if someone in a position to actually do something about it was made aware that they had mass produced copyrighted materials, they would be willing to offer a reasonable fee. However actually getting in touch with that person may be challenging without legal action.

mcherm2• 12 years ago

Oh, I'm not knocking Kraft for being unaware of the problem before the blog post, I'm just hoping they'll be classy about how they handle it AFTER it has been discovered.

pyb2• 12 years ago

Notice how they removed a couple of walls and made it 5x easier than the original.

triangleman2• 12 years ago

I think they actually added a wall and made it harder.

pyb2• 12 years ago

Ah yes, you're right

decode• 12 years ago

I'm not sure which you mean by "original", but in the KrazyDad version you can go in a nearly straight line from the start point to the end point, but in the Kraft version, you have to take a spiral path through more than 360 degrees around the circle. Even if they started with the KrazyDad version, that's a pretty interesting change.

rrss1122• 12 years ago

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.

dllthomas12• 12 years ago

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.

PaulAJ• 12 years ago

The maze becomes copyright once it is fixed in tangible form. The license does not include commercial use (which this clearly is), so it is unlicensed.

coldpie• 12 years ago

The copyright notice is on every single page of the linked PDF, and every page at krazydad.com has a copyright notice at the bottom. What trouble are you having, exactly?

Additionally, you don't have to provide a copyright notice or any licensing terms for your copyright to be valid an enforceable (with some very special exceptions blah blah).

thirdusername• 12 years ago

Without making a judgement on weather or not it is or should be legal, it's sadly common to plagiarize or outright copy without conscience amongst marketeers, especially the smaller firms.

I have conversations with (often the same) marketeers that they need to purchase the $9-99 font they've used in their design on almost every project. They send me copy often verbatim copied from the website they are "taking inspiration from". There is unsurprisingly little integrity in the industry. Bigger firms is sometimes slightly better since they have lawyers cracking down on this kind of behavior.

Source: I work for a software consultancy that primarily work with marketing firms.

Yimgo• 12 years ago

How he dealt with the design agency is quite selfless and ended up with $4K in donations for local food banks.

http://krazydad.com/blog/2014/07/18/about-that-mac-cheese-ma...

This maze looks familiar

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