'Flattery'

Gaming website Kotaku has claimed that a Daily Mail story by Allan Hall has 'flattering' similarities to two of their articles.

Brian Crecente writes:

You can't imagine how flattered we were today to discover that the Daily Mail doesn't just read our little gaming site, they even like to sometimes "repurpose" our news.

Take for instance their story this evening headlined: Jewish groups slam violent 'blast-the-Nazis' Auschwitz uprising video game.

Under the tantalizing headline we found a surprisingly familiar group of quotes. Quotes from interviews we conducted with the Anti-Defamation League, interviews with the Simon Wiesenthal Center (though they spelled their center with a fancy misplaced R) and quotes from the game's developer saying things he says he didn't share with anyone else.

The Kotaku articles appeared on the 10th and 11th, the Mail's on the 16th.

Here's a few 'similar' passages. Kotaku:

Sonderkommando Revolt project lead Maxim "Doomjedi" Genis says his team of artists, coders and writers is simply trying to make an action game only for the challenge, for the fun, to entertain.

Mail:

Maxim Genis, the brains behind the game, says his team of artists, coders and writers is simply trying to make 'an action game only for the challenge, for the fun, to entertain...'

Kokatu:

Genis wrote via e-mail that he was partly inspired to create Sonderkommando Revolt based on his spiritual convictions. The game maker believes that, in a previous incarnation of his life, he was imprisoned as a Jew by the Nazis, served as a Sonderkommando in a concentration camp and died before the events of 1944 that prompted the creation of the mod.

Mail:

Genis wrote via e-mail that he was partly inspired to create Sonderkommando Revolt based on his spiritual convictions. The game maker believes that, in a previous incarnation of his life, he was imprisoned as a Jew by the Nazis, served as a Sonderkommando in a concentration camp and died before the events of 1944.

It is especially poor practice for the Mail to say that Genis wrote 'via e-mail' and then fail to name who that email was written to - or pretend it was written to them.

In related news, the Press Gazette is reporting that the Daily Mail is being sued for $1m in the US over copyright:

Mavrix Photo, a company based in Florida but with offices in Los Angeles, is seeking damages over the use of ten sets of images of celebrities it says the Mail published online and in print without the appropriate authority.

The agency, though Californian legal firm One LLP, filed papers last month at the Central District Court of California in Los Angeles claiming that it offered pictures of actress Kate Hudson in a bikini by a pool to the Mail for use in print only upon payment of a fee.

Despite "prominent warnings" the Mail used the pictures of Hudson without prior payment or authorisation both in print and online, the court papers suggest.

In addition to the Hudson images, the court papers claim the Mail repeatedly used its Mavrix images without prior consent and then would occasionally send "a check [sic] for a trivial, insubstantial sum of money which was never agreed upon as the appropriate fee".

The article continues:

The court papers accuse the Mail of having a history of copyright infringements, saying: "The pattern and practice of the defendant is to ignore the demand of photo agencies or photographers to agree rates before use and to simply take the pictures and use them without compensation or to then offer token compensation."

This 'history' is highlighted in several articles from the British Journal of Photography and at the Russian Photos Blog.

The Press Gazette says Mavrix:

...is seeking statutory damages of $150,000 (£96,195) per infringement, legal costs and a declaration from the court preventing further unauthorised use.

The Daily Mail has yet to respond to a request for comment.