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Creationists Violating Copyright
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Nov 25, 2007 02:07 AM
from the lawyer-on-speed-dial dept.
from the lawyer-on-speed-dial dept.
The_Rook writes "The Discovery Institute, more a lawyer mill than a scientific institution, copied Harvard University's BioVisions video 'The Inner Life of the Cell,' stripped out Harvard's copyright notice, credits, and narration, inserted their own creationist-friendly narration, and renamed the video 'The Cell As an Automated City.' The new title subtly suggests that a cell is designed rather than evolved."
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It was planned. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It was planned. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It was planned. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It was planned. (Score:4, Funny)
Arrrrrrrr!
Re:It was planned. (Score:5, Insightful)
An exampled discussion: Should religion artwork be allowed in government buildings?
If all religions are to be treated fairly, then if you are to permit marble sculptures of religions figures, then you must allow be willing to accept sculptures of His Holy Noodlyness. If you are to permit paintings of a guy in white robes, white curly hair, and a long beard, then you must also be willing to permit paintings of a plate of spaghetti reaching out.
Re:It was planned. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it does, you see, after you separate things they are no longer combined. As you have already pointed out, it is not practical to represent everyone's beliefs (numbers are irrelevant, if a single person has a belief they are equally entitled to have that belief respected as another individual who happens to have a belief shared by many others); therefore the only way to respect ALL religions is not to represent any of them in government.
As I am sure you will agree, the best solution is to not include religious representations on city halls at all (particularly since they lack any legitimate function). Just as religious moral values have no place in our laws and should instead be instilled by family and friends and enforced through stigma in those same circles. An excellent example is prostitution, without a moral component defined by religious values there is no justification for laws against prostitution and thus there should be none. Instead, families with those beliefs should teach their children not to be or solicit prostitutes and leave those with other values alone.
Re:It was planned. (Score:4, Informative)
...and here someone pointed out earlier that the whole point of the FSM was not to be insulting...
Tell ya what. I'll happily buy that when the FSM can be used in a discussion thread WITHOUT someone slamming the spiritual beliefs of others.
Note: I did not use the word "religion". Big difference 'tween being religious and bein' spiritual.
As for the CR violation? Take 'em to court jus' like anyone else. Get a C&D order. This isn't news... unless you were LOOKING for a flame-fest 'tween two opposing sides.
Re:It was planned. (Score:5, Funny)
God didn't create the world, God stole the Devils' science project !
Re:It was planned. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It was planned. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It was planned. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot complaining about copyright violations (Score:5, Informative)
The majority view here on Slashdot is:
Does that answer your question?
-:sigma.SB
Re:Slashdot complaining about copyright violations (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
That's not hypocritical. They didn't just copy the Harvard video, they stripped the copyright statement! That's plagarism. Note that even the most liberal OSS licenses (e.g. the two-clause BSD) still maintain that you are not allowed to remove the copyright notice. And I doubt you'll find many slashdotters who would claim that plagiarism should be allowed.
If they had just copied and distributed the Harvard video, I'm sure not many people here would have objected.
I'm a scientist. If you make copies of my articles and propagate them, I'm happy. If you take my articles, change a few things, remove my name and add yours, I'm angry.
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I'm not going to say all Creationists are dumb. I've met a few who aren't. But what in the hell were these guys thinking? "Oooo... let's use their video. They'll never catch on, and even if they do, what are they going to do about it?"
Dumbasses.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
-Buck
Re:Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
The Copyright Act allows the copyright holder to choose between actual damages and statutory damages, which may be as much as $150,000 per infringement. Furthermore, it is not out of the question that punitive damages will be awarded if the infringement is intentional and egregious, which is arguably the case here. Traditionally, it has been assumed that punitive damages are not available for copyright infringement, but courts have awarded them in some recent cases.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The Discovery Institute is almost certainly going to claim Fair Use or something similiar, but I don't see how they can justify that when they stripped out the credits and copyright notice. Not to mention the
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Oooh, a lawsuit from "harvard"
What are they going to do, row us to death?
Oh no, I'm so scared!
seen printed in the cell DNA.... (Score:5, Funny)
All rights reserved
Reproduction other than by the means provided for in your licence agreement is prohibited
My alternative theory... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Haha. More complex than editing your (posted)
BTW: You can watch the harvard video here: http://multimedia.mcb.harvard.edu/media.html [harvard.edu]
That was a superb animation. I watched it for the first time 3 months ago. Another version goes with no comm
Harvard Can't possibly have copyright (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
So...what you're saying is (Score:5, Funny)
...the film was originally intelligently designed. Then it evolved.
Oblig. M.C. Hawking (Score:4, Funny)
every time I think of them, my trigger finger itches,
They want to have their bullshit...taught in public class,
Stephen J. Gould [wikipedia.org] should put his foot right up their ass!
What to choose... (Score:5, Funny)
What to choose, what to choose...
The new audio makes it worse! (Score:3, Insightful)
What's worse than peddling religion in the name of science? Doing it badly! Come on, at least believe strongly enough in your own message to articulate it clearly.
What's the problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Removing logo good thing? (Score:3, Funny)
Otherwise it might appear to some person watching that the ramblings were actually created by harvard.
Not merely copyright violation (Score:5, Insightful)
Violation of copyright is really only the superficial issue, and only addresses the ownership of the original work.
The creationist/intelligent design cabal is successful because since the time of Darwin, they have understood that their views cannot be defended through legitimate scientific inquiry, and can never be by definition. Therefore, they attack evolution by natural selection by appealing to and exploiting public passions, fears, and ignorance, and cloaking themselves in psuedoscientific legitimacy. They hope to insinuate themselves into rational discourse by invoking a false sense of objectivity and open-mindedness, appealing to the public to "hear both sides," which is merely a sophistic tactic to put their position on equal footing with decades of confirmed and verified scientific theory.
In the end, what I truly don't understand is why the creationists are so hell-bent on disproving evolution. History has shown us time and time again that when religion fights science, religion ends up with egg on its face. (Galileo and his support of Copernican heliocentrism comes to mind.) If I were devoutly religious, the last thing I would want is to try to prove God's existence, because then such a proof would obviate the need for faith in the first place. Such a desire to enshrine one's belief in the language of science seems horribly misplaced at best, and ultimately, is a far greater detriment and threat to religion than science. Meanwhile, the scientists can only follow the path that nature reveals.
Re:Not merely copyright violation (Score:4, Insightful)
Your integrity ought to be questioned if your answer is anything other than "Nothing!" The video does look like a
Given this fact, your characterization of the modified presentation as "distorted and misrepresented" is
As for the copyright aspect
The whole "creation vs. evolution" argument has an effect on people that makes them utterly stupid and unable to make intelligent, rational arguments (yes, that goes for rabid creationists, as well as rabid evolutionists). If you want to save what is left of your intelligence, I advise you to take a step back and look at the debate from a distance. That's what I do as a believing scientist.
As for what copyright ought to allow people to do and ought not, I invite you to watch Lessig's wonderful presentation and make up your own mind: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/187 [ted.com].
Re:Not merely copyright violation (Score:4, Informative)
I stand by my claim that the DI misrepresented and distorted the original content of the video, precisely because the original narration does not make any statement about how these biochemical mechanisms came into being, and because it is reasonable to presume that the video's content was developed by scientists, they could not legitimately believe that intelligent design furnishes a valid scientific framework for these mechanisms' existence. The logical conclusion is that the subsequent use is a distortion.
Furthermore, to compare this misrepresentation to an AMV on YouTube may be valid from a legal standpoint, but invalid from a sociopolitical standpoint. For instance, you would not want the media to similarly play fast and loose with content they did not author or to fail to cite or document their sources (though quite unfortunately, they often do--hence the introduction of the word "truthiness" in our modern lexicon). It is not reasonable to hold all such forms of content manipulation to the same standard, as those with a background in journalism and/or art history could point out.
I find it interesting that so few people seem to have a problem with the failure to make the proper attribution, and the implications thereof. There is no reason not to, unless the intent is to mask the true authorship of the original work. That this is something that happens on YouTube does not make it less egregious, or any more justifiable. Perhaps these increasingly lax attitudes towards plagiarism is an unfortunate reflection of the great ease with which information is replicated and manipulated nowadays, and the corresponding difficulty in determining the original source.
Um... all of it? (Score:5, Insightful)
kdawsonisatroll? (Score:5, Insightful)
ID arguments fall apart under their own theory (Score:5, Informative)
ID arguments fall apart under their own theory. Their theory basically states that some things in nature are too complex to have come about randomly, therefore someone must have designed them. It's notable that this is a logical argument, not a scientific one. There is no testable statement here. The only valid test would be to put an empty jar in a room and wait for "the designer" to place a new form of life in it. I haven't heard of any successful experiments of this type :).
Their current argument though would look at a tree's cells and all of the complexities that go on and say that there is no way it could have evolved. ID just says evolution is false, it doesn't try to explain anything itself. Take just the leaf of a tree though. If you just look at it, you would say someone designed it, placed everything exactly where it was and made this beautiful design. If you know anything about biology, or if you just watch a leaf grow from spring to summer, you will see that it wasn't placed there, it grew out of the tree. ID proponents would say that is hogwash. There's no way that a seed could turn into a tree. Just look at them, the seed is so small and the tree is a complex structure with many types of cells. Someone had to design each leaf and place it there, there's no way a single seed could become a whole tree with all the different leaves.
ID proponents don't claim this that I know of because they can see it happen. Everyone can observe a tree growing and we know that it ends up the way it is because of a natural process that begins with the DNA encoded in the seed and that is modified by the environment the tree grows in. They can't 'see' evolution occur so they dismiss it in favor of something written in a book thousands of years ago with no proof that most of the world's population doesn't even believe. In reality, we've observed DNA mutations and even speciation events. They can't comprehend the size of the Earth and the billions of years that it has existed, so they claim evolutionists just "throw billions of years at the problem" to explain it.
My favorite is when an atheist in a debate claimed that our large brain size was proof of evolution because prior to modern medicine, 20% of women died in childbirth due to the size of the babies' heads. The "true believers" claimed this was proof that natural selection was false because it caused the woman to die. If a larger brain gave even a 10% advantage to survival though, it would prove to be a total benefit to the species, and we can see now it has worked since we've become the dominant species on the planet due largely to our intelligence. If you look at it from a designer's perspective though, there is no plausible reason not to just make the woman's hips a little wider. From an evolutionist's perspective, the change just hasn't happened yet. Now of course there is little selective pressure since we have modern medicine and C-Sections available.
It was his punishment,,,, (Score:4, Insightful)
Try it sometime, you'll see a perfect example of the cognitive dissonance Christians undergo when faced with some of the less savory aspects of The Bible. They've got prepared excuses for things like creation, but not childbirth pain.
"It's SUPPOSED to hurt, and you're SUPPOSED to suffer. Epidurals are in direct defiance of god's wishes and you'll burn in hell."
In fact...most of my arguing with Christians works this way these days. I've long given up trying to educate them - it's futile. Now I just point out flaws in their "Christian" behavior. A good one is to point out the bit where they're not supposed to own cars or TV sets, that they have to give everything they own to the poor and let god provide for their basic needs (Matthew 19:21).
Thank you letter (Score:4, Funny)
The Discovery Institute would like to thank you for raising the visibility of our organization and our fight for justice. For many years we have fought to enable creation theory in the classroom alongside evolutionary theory. Your efforts have assisted us greatly in getting the word out on our issues. It is important to acknowledge that for too long, Christians have lacked legal representation. Now our law firm 'The Discovery Institute' fights for them in the courtroom. We would like for everyone to think of us as like the MPAA/RIAA, but motivated instead by "heavenly profits".
Sincerely,
Fun. D. Mental
Esquire
Director of Outreach
The Discovery Institute
* disclaimer - I love the potential for satire in this situation but I think darwinian evolution is a seriously flawed theory *
Re:Look for the double standard. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot is now KDawson's soapbox (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:On which day did God create Cells? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am sure that most anti-evolution parents would want their child to grow up to marry a good looking person of the opposite sex with lots of money and no history of disease in the family.
Re:Uh, fair use? (Score:5, Insightful)
But I suppose you already know that and you were only trolling, correct?
Re:Uh, fair use? (Score:5, Informative)
It would be right if we found the video without any narrative buried deep in the remainings of an ancient civilisation or something else. Then both narratives would be part of a discourse how to interpret the video. Then the video would be the raw scientific data, and both narratives had their rightful purpose.
Here it is different. The video is in no way raw data. It was choosen, cut, mounted together to help explaining something. In this case the narrative is the core of the video, and the pictures are merely there to illustrate. As someone who routinely draws comics as a hobby I always was playing with the possibilitiy to erase all words in a comic strip and then fill in something else which narrates a completely different story. Misinterpretation of a sequence of pictures is thus no "scientific discourse", it is always possible. At most it shows that the pictures alone are not enough to make the case for what Harvard wanted to explain with the video (but Harvard added the narrative anyway because the knew it was not enough). If the Institute wanted to show that, they might have a case, albeit a weak one.
But in this case it is just making a derivative work of someone else's work without a) getting a permission and b) without attributing it correctly. This is purely a copyright case, nothing else.
Re:"We're Right But They're Bigots" Continues (Score:5, Insightful)
I would also like to point out that complaining that your post will be modded down is not somehow a sort of magical incantation to prevent it from actually being modded down. That sort of reverse psychology does not work, especially when you fail to have any legitimate points.
Re:"We're Right But They're Bigots" Continues (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the theory of Intelligent Design* is not science.
Note that this statement does not say anything about the truth of ID. It merely states that ID as a proposed explanation of the origin of life does not satisfy fundamental criteria necessary to be called science. I cannot tell you whether ID is true or false, because I DO NOT KNOW. But I can tell you that it isn't a scientific theory. Why its proponents seem so desperate to enshrine it as science and somehow believe that shrouding it in the mantle of science would increase its legitimacy, I cannot understand. I am perfectly willing to entertain the notion that the universe had a divine creator, as I am also willing to entertain the notion of a supernatural origin of life, as are many scientists. But as scientists, none of us can rationally place those notions in a scientific framework.
*Note that I use the phrase "Intelligent Design" here in its broadest context--that the origin of life is supernatural, rather than in its specific statements that strive to demonstrate this claim (e.g., the argument of irreducible complexity).
Re:"We're Right But They're Bigots" Continues (Score:4, Insightful)