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Comment by bigiain | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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.

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.

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.

"The author is basically directly attacking some poor bastard who works at Naughty Dog."

No. Decisions about IP are never "just one person". They involve layers of approvals and sign-offs, some creative, some financial, some legal. That's not to say that mistakes don't happen. Of course they happen. But you're not dealing with one person here, you're dealing with a system. And clearly, it's a system that could stand to be tighter than it is.

If, by the time they found out, I was already getting media attention and positive reviews for "my compilation", I'm 100% sure they'd "contact me first" not "asking me to take down or else …", but with a _demand_ to desist immediately and notice of impending lawsuit with stonkingly huge punitive damages claimed.

They would most certainly _not_ contact me first, their first contact would be with their lawyer.

For individuals without a copyright-specialist lawyer on retainer/speed-dial - a ranting blog post is a poor but possibly only substitute. (And who knows, perhaps the OP _has_ lawyered up, and the ranting blog post is an intentional tactic to publicise this so they can demonstrate widespread knowledge of the OPs work in court to increase the plausible damage claim...)

That would only apply if people used the map within the game. Specifically, if when they wanted to find how to get somewhere by subway they actually turned on the game, navigated the character to where the map was in-game, and then studied it to find the best route.

What this is more akin to is someone posting a youtube movie including in-game footage of Last of Us. And Naughty Dog extends a ton of grace when it comes to this. Even allowing videos of the whole game being played through.

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