I see literally <i>thousands</i> 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?
Reminds me of Roger Penrose and toilet paper plagiarism: <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20050312084035/http://www.parascope.com/articles/slips/fs_151.htm" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20050312084035/http://www.parasco...</a>
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)<p>That's certainly got to be interesting/validating for the op though (albeit simultaneously violating/annoying).<p>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.
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)?<p>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.
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?)
Sure, copyright infringement, plagiarism, but not theft! Copying is not theft! We need to hear this more often.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU7axyrHWDQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU7axyrHWDQ</a>
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>Source: I work for a software consultancy that primarily work with marketing firms.
We seem to have killed the site.<p><a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:krazydad.com/blog/2014/07/13/hmm-this-maze-looks-familiar/" rel="nofollow">https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:krazyd...</a>
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).<p>Does this necessarily exclude a for-profit use, or does that have to be explicitly declared? IANAL, so I'd like to know.
How he dealt with the design agency is quite selfless and ended up with $4K in donations for local food banks.<p><a href="http://krazydad.com/blog/2014/07/18/about-that-mac-cheese-maze/" rel="nofollow">http://krazydad.com/blog/2014/07/18/about-that-mac-cheese-ma...</a>
<i>> 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…</i><p>And now the next maze to be copied by someone will be that one, and they'll argue that this statement is permission!