Bix96 said:
As much as I would love to back somebody using the same tactics that big businesses use to screw over your average joe this guy comes off as a massive dick just trying to money grub it reminds me of that guy that tried to sue Rockstar Games cause he looked kinda like CJ from San Andreas
If I remember the case he made was not based entirely on how he looked, but also on other similarities to the character and some of the details in the back story, combined with him having allegedly met and talked to people from Rockstar. I might be thinking of the wrong thing, but I vaguely remember this, and I think that the gist of it was him claiming that Rockstar wound up making money by loosely basing the game off of his life story (very loosely).
A similar case would be the whole "Space Channel 5" controversy where Lady Miss Kier (from Dee-lite, I think I have her stage name right) was used as the basis for Ulala, something they were up front about in trying to get her on the project, but when they couldn't come to an agreement they did it anyway and just cut her out entirely. In this case though the feud revolves less around the specifics of the likeness as much as the imitation of someone's stage persona and routine... which can be a big deal, while she wasn't successful, it was very similar to the more successful case where Gallager (the dude who smashes fruit with a hammer) sued his brother for stealing his show/material and
performing it for money without permission.
At any rate, the thing about maps of well traveled areas is that they tend to be very generic, most money made off of them largely comes from the distribution rather than the imagery itself, and it's possible to get free maps and such if you know where to look, in part because the information is pretty much public domain. At the end of the day you can't copyright an image of Boston's streets or whatever. On a lot of levels this particular complaint does seem like a
greedy opportunist.
When it comes to Ellen Page, I think she's being an idiot. As I mentioned in another post we recently got official confirmation that a young Alyssa Milano (Charmed, Who's The Boss, etc...) was used as the basis for the character "Ariel" in "The Little Mermaid", something she (and others) suspected, but never knew for sure. When it was confirmed it was pretty much "cool, no big deal, I'm really flattered to learn this" at least in the articles I read. In comparison Ellen seems to be being a twit with a lot less to go on.
Not to mention that if you start saying artists can't base their work on real people or models without paying royalties, that's a big problem, since that's a big part of what artists do, especially when it comes to public people like celebrities and politicians. I don't think this kind of thing negatively impacts anyone's career as there is a substantial difference between an image based on an image or observation, and actually having someone there to model for you directly, or actually act/mocap on your behalf. If Ellen Page had a very distinctive persona or routine that was being duplicated, well that would be different, but this isn't a case like this... unlike say stealing someone's show routine/comedy material/etc... and using it yourself. Of course even in those cases legally speaking there hasn't been much of a leg to stand on when it comes to video game (Lady Miss Kier did not win her case, though I personally think she should have for the same reason Gallager was apparently successful).
