

My Boston T map used in “The Last of Us” PS3 game - martingordon
http://transitmaps.tumblr.com/post/53696766419/boston-theft

======
tylerritchie
I don't understand the commenters saying that it's cool that a large company
flush with cash shouldn't be expected to pay for copyrighted works it uses to
make a profit.

I'm a biologist, not a lawyer, but it seems like our system is setup pretty
well to protect the rights in this case. He should have consulted with a
copyright attorney and started with a bill and cease and desist for $10,000 or
whatever makes him happy. If they don't pay he can file a lawsuit. At this
point someone would look at what the cost of the legal battle would be, and
the cost of having to pull all of the existing copies of the game and re-issue
it if they lose and offer to cut him a check.

~~~
fuzzywalrus
Indeed, Naughty Dog copy protects its work, it should respect others. There's
a lot of speculation be it: interns, lazy artists, bad production managers
etc. What I'd like to know is if any other work is directly derivative in the
game.

~~~
hackinthebochs
>What I'd like to know is if any other work is directly derivative in the
game.

You mean besides Ellen Page's face?
([http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/06/24/video-game-stole-
my-f...](http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/06/24/video-game-stole-my-face-
actress-ellen-page-says/))

------
donutdan4114
Yea, I think the author could have approached this issue with a little more
grace. He should have tried to contact Naughty Dog and try to work something
out before spiddling his rage into that post.

Then, if Naughty Dog chooses to ignore the author's claims of copyright
infringement, he could make a big stink over it. Personally, if I was the
author, I'd be honored to be in a game of that magnitude at all. In other
words, it should be a good selling point for the author from now on.

"Oh yea, you know that best selling, perfect game, The Last of Us? Yea, they
used some of my art in there... Oh yea, no big deal."

Truthfully, if they had contacted the author before incorporating it into the
game, and they found out it would cost money, they probably would have found
another map, or make one of their own. A company that large has the man power
to make a subway map.

I won't argue that the author has a right to be upset, but don't just start
some type of flame war against a company that people love right now.

~~~
bigiain
If I released a compilation of games with an unauthorised copy of a Naughty
Dog title, how much "grace" do you suppose they'd extend? Do you think they'd
"try to contact me and work something out"?

You can't have it both ways - if copyright protects Naughty Dog and their
work, how can it possibly not also protect the OP's maps?

~~~
donutdan4114
Do you think Naughty Dog would contact you, and ask that you take down your
work or pay damages? Or would make an angry blog post stating how furious they
are and that they demand compensation, making it public for the whole world to
see?

I am thinking they would contact you first.

~~~
to3m
Acceptable standards of behaviour are very different for corporate entities.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels they could demand a corporate entity
to behave with a certain amount of class when looking out for what its owners
see as its interests. By contrast, I think it actually perfectly acceptable
for an individual to call out a corporation's poor behaviour, without warning,
in a public post, with profanity.

~~~
donutdan4114
They might seem like a large company, but there was probably one person,
probably an intern, who had to find some textures for that part of the game.
That person made a mistake.

Obviously there should be checks/balances in place to make sure unauthorized
imagery isn't used. But _people_ make mistakes. The author is basically
directly attacking some poor bastard who works at Naughty Dog.

I am sure Naughty Dog will fix the situation, and I'm sure they could have
done it without being publicly flamed.

~~~
to3m
Well, firstly Naughty Dog ARE a large company. 240 people, according to
Wikipedia. OK, compared to General Electric, they might not seem like much -
but 240 is plenty large by game studio standards. Regardless, my comment about
corporate entities has nothing to do with size! Whether made up of 1 person or
10,000, a business can and should be held to a higher standard of behaviour
than an individual. (Don't worry, businesses aren't alive, so they're unlikely
to feel unfairly put upon.)

Anyway: it doesn't really feel like an individual is being "attacked" here,
just the company as a whole. What's unreasonable about that? It's the
company's responsibility to ensure that they release a product that (amongst
other things) doesn't infringe copyright. It appears that this time they have
failed to do that, and they're being called out on it.

The closest thing to an attack I could see was the suggestion that "they" did
a google image search to find the image - which, to my eyes, quite apart from
being obviously merely a supposition, hardly sounds like anybody is being
singled out.

------
jeffgreco
What likely happened: Developer needs an official MBTA map. They do an image
search. That map is one of the first five results. They take it from there and
use it.

Seems like getting " _fucking furious_ " is a bit overkill.

~~~
shock-value
Yeah and that's completely negligent if you are an artist working on the game.
This is like intellectual property 101, and people in the game design field,
especially at that level, should know better. Absolutely inexcusable and
obviously illegal as well.

~~~
alex_doom
As someone who's worked in production. Mostly likely someone was told to find
an image for FPO purposes, and it escaped QA rounds OR the production dept
said something and a manager told them to "fuck off no one is going to
notice". That's an actual quote from an old manager.

------
jaytaylor
You made a map, then someone used the map. Isn't that nice? If someone using
the work you published on the internet is a big problem then contact them, and
if they won't remove it then file a lawsuit. This comes off as the rantings of
a childish whiner.

~~~
bluetooth
> You made a map, then someone used the map. Isn't that nice?

Yeah, if that map was free to use, then sure. But that's not the case.

It's become all too common I see this type of argument used in cases where big
name studios rip work of others without attribution. This is an extremely weak
(not to mention somewhat offensive) argument which is analogous to telling a
rape victim "you should be happy the rapist found you attractive."

~~~
bigiain
In the inimitable words of @mike_ftw

[http://vimeo.com/22053820](http://vimeo.com/22053820)

(marginally NSFW)

------
Ellipsis753
I wish he'd just handled this in private. If they refuse to settle then sure,
complain online. But this could have very well been on honest mistake that
could have been quietly settled out of the public eye. Now this is going to
end up being far more of a big thing that it really had to be.

Also the use of the screenshot without permission may also be copyright
infringement.

~~~
connortomas
I'm not sure "honest mistake" is really acceptable. This is a multi-million-
dollar Triple A game. I think it's reasonable to expect their legal team
should have double- and triple-check the rights to all arts assets. Ye, there
are a _lot_ of assets used in a game of TLoU's magnitude, but the subway map
is so prominent I can't understand how it would have been skipped over. If
they had time to include the asset, they should have had time to secure
rights.

The screencap used to demonstrate the theft constitutes fair use, by the way.
Cameron's using it to make a point to support his argument, which is totally
legal.

~~~
alexqgb
If true, "honest mistake" is an acceptable answer. But it's not one you bring
up with the person whose work you appropriated. It's one you bring up with
your insurance company when they're following up on the errors and omissions
claim (E&O) you filed in order to cover the losses incurred by your own
negligence.

Protip: When you're in this situation DO NOT blame an intern. Interns - by
definition - are unskilled, unpaid, and uninvested. If your insurance company
finds out that interns are the only thing standing between them and damages
for an IP lawsuit, they'll strongly consider yanking your insurance
altogether, at which point you've got a snowball's chance in hell of finding a
distributer.

That's because copyright law allows rights-holders to sue not just the author
of the illegally derivative work, but the author's distributors. Since the
distributors have no way to be absolutely certain that the authors they buy
from have actually cleared every single underlying right, they insist that the
authors carry insurance that will cover any losses suffered by the distributer
in cases just like this. In any human enterprise, a certain number of errors
will happen. That's normal. But if a production company develops a history of
recklessness, it may find itself uninsurable, and that's the end of commercial
viability.

Handling Rights & Clearances is work that is both skilled and tedious, meaning
it should pay well. Employers that "inadvertently" screw artists by cutting
this particular corner deserved to get hit as hard as the law allows.

------
martingordon
Mods: I submitted this post with a different title since I am not the author
of the post. Please change the title to reflect this; I don't want to mislead
anyone.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Side note. It is actually kind of lame when people post their own blog posts
to HN, so I never assume the person posting the link is the person who wrote
the article. In that regard the personal pronoun is not ambiguous.

That said, I totally understand the desire by people writing blog posts
wanting to get HN's take on it. But that is a different problem.

~~~
nitrogen
Not being able to submit your own blog post presents a bootstrapping problem
for new, potentially useful blogs. Also, HN's guidelines recommend submitting
a blog post if you want to add your own commentary to an article (or at least
they used to).

As someone who occasionally posts a Show HN from my own blog, and whose
current career was heavily influenced by one such post making the front page a
couple of years ago, I hope you'll reconsider your opposition. :-)

~~~
ChuckMcM
I don't oppose it per se, it's just somewhat awkward. It _is_ annoying when
the only contribution some user on the site has is to submit their blog
entries to it. For folks who are contributing members that annoyance doesn't
apply.

And to be perfectly clear this is just my own take on it, I also think it is
awkward when someone at a meeting opens the conversation with my by pitching
their company or project.

Thinking about it a bit more deeply as I write this I think that is the crux
of the issue. Amongst people I know, having them suggest something they have
done, or are working on, sort of out of the blue feels like "catching up"
whereas for people I don't know that feels more awkward. I don't have a lot of
context to evaluate what they are pitching and for me, perhaps for others,
it's uncomfortable.

------
jpark
Just curious. Did the author get the proper permissions to use the MBTA logo
in his map? It would be ironic if the map itself violated MBTA IP.

~~~
mortenjorck
I highly doubt he got MBTA approval for the use of their trademark. That said,
it's not like he's selling posters of it, in which case his product could
conceivably be mistaken for licensed MBTA merchandise.

~~~
alex_doom
Yeah he's selling copies of it; [http://www.cambooth.net/for-
sale#bostonrail](http://www.cambooth.net/for-sale#bostonrail)

~~~
mortenjorck
Interesting. Looks like he still thought it out, though: The T logo is missing
in the wall prints.

~~~
alexqgb
Judging from the exchanges in his blog's comments, he's a guy who knows his
copyright, and has been careful about using the MTA's logo only in situations
where Fair Use allows it to appear, and not using in situations where it
doesn't.

I can see why he's so pissed, by the way. Having taken the time to understand
the rules and operate within them, he's going to take an especially dim view
of others who should have, and didn't.

------
benguild
I think this is a load of baloney and a huge flaw in the "copyright" system.
Those maps are everywhere in Boston … in tourists' photographs, floating
around on the street, on peoples' phones.

If that's not public domain, I don't know what it is. It seems like this guy
is just upset that he feels entitled to additional compensation when in
reality he's already had his work licensed by the MBTA for their system …
which is available to the public. Is that not public domain?

~~~
LoganCale
This is not the official MBTA map, this is an unsanctioned redesign he made of
it to demonstrate his idea for how to improve the official map. It is his
property alone.

~~~
chimeracoder
To the untrained eye, this probably looks indistinguishable from the actual
map.

I lived in Boston for many years, took the T on a regular basis, had that map
committed to memory at one point, and I _still_ didn't realize until I looked
a second time that it wasn't the official map.

They should certainly have double-checked this before copying it, but I can
see why the confusion would arise.

------
piratebroadcast
I wouldnt have thought that that map was a single persons property- I thought
it was a city made map. Way to be a drama queen about it.

~~~
bigiain
Do you think Naughty Dog would be any more "in the right" if they'd used a
"city made map" without authorisation?

(And cynical follow-up question: Do you suspect as I do that the reason they
_didn't_ use the official Boston map is because they knew damn well that the
Boston Metro people have lawyers on retainer, where some random designer on
the internet selling his own personally created version of the Bostem T Map -
which are arguably better then the official versions - has probably no on-hand
legal representation, and can probably do no more that whine on his blog when
we "steal" from him?)

------
jforman
Furious? He just got a pay day — I'm sure he can find a lawyer to take the
case on contingency. Should be a pretty quick settlement.

