Law

The copyright infringment continues–it seems that “Expelled” makes use of about 25 seconds of John Lennon’s song “Imagine,” but permission was neither sought nor granted for its use: In a written statement, the film’s three producers – Walt Ruloff, John Sullivan and Logan Craft – acknowledged that they did not seek permission, but they called the use “momentary.” “After seeking the opinion of legal counsel it was seen as a First Amendment issue and protected under the fair use doctrine of free speech,” the statement said. A spokeswoman said under 25 seconds of the song are used in the movie.Now this is actually an instance where I agree with “Expelled”’s producers–this should fall within fair use guidelines. The courts, however, have already ruled otherwise. (UPDATE: Not quite accurate, see correction below.) In 2005, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films that even a 1.5-second sample requires a license. I’d be happy to see a lawsuit on this issue result in that ruling being overturned. I’ve previously written about the danger of such erosion of fair use to the creation of new music in one of this blog’s more popular posts. The link at the end of that post about “Amen Brother” is well worth your time. (Also related is this film in which fair-use samples from Disney films are used to make Disney characters explain current U.S. copyright law.) UPDATE (April 18, 2008): Russell Blackford argues that “Expelled”’s use of “Imagine” is to make comment on the content of the song, and makes a moral case for the legitimacy of its use. I agree with his argument–the use of a sample of the song to make comment on it enhances the case for “fair use,” but I think it should have met fair use guidelines even without that. UPDATE (April 23, 2008): As commenter lquilter points out below, the Bridgeport case did not say quite what I said above–it doesn’t eliminate fair use as a defense to a use of small samples, it eliminates the argument that sampling is using so little of the original material that no copyright applies. The result is that a lengthier court proceeding is required to fight for such use. “Expelled”’s makers are now being sued over the use of “Imagine." I don’t feel bad for them, but I think they should win their case. This probably guarantees that the film will not make a profit from its theatrical run, after deducting legal expenses. UPDATE (May 1, 2008): The Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project has signed on to defend “Expelled” against the Ono Lennon lawsuit. Good for them, I hope they win this one. It shouldn’t be difficult. UPDATE (May 2, 2008): P.Z. Myers points out distortions in “Expelled”’s press release about the their defense in the “Imagine” lawsuit. Even in the rare case when I agree with them (their fair use defense here), they still have to throw in a distortion or two to show that they are sleazy, I guess. (I disagree with Myers’ assertion that there is no commentary on the song; see Russell Blackford’s analysis, linked to above.) Perhaps the strongest argument against “Expelled” in this case is that they sought licenses for other songs they used, but did not even attempt to get permission for “Imagine,” as pointed out by Laura Quilter (who has also commented here). UPDATE (May 5, 2008): The judge in the case has enjoined “Expelled” from any further distribution or DVD release, though they can continue showing the film in the theaters where it’s already playing (currently down to 655 theaters). UPDATE (May 9, 2008): And now down to 402 theaters. UPDATE (June 2, 2008): The judge has ruled against Yoko Ono’s motion for a permanent injunction against “Expelled” on the grounds that the defendants are likely to prevail. ...

The folks at XVIVO have argued that “Expelled” has engaged in copyright infringement by directly copying from their film, “The Inner Life of the Cell.” The “Expelled” producers have responded by claiming that they constructed their film based on original research: However, the latest claim concerning the copyright status of our proprietary animation is so ridiculous, bogus and misinformed that we must respond. Premise Media invested significant time and money into the research and original creation of the animation used in our film to illustrate cellular activity. Our own team of experts created the highest quality of animation that is available. In fact, the animation we use in the theatrical release of our movie is only a small portion of the animation we have created and plan to use in future projects.Darwin Central has proposed a paternity test in the form of a series of image comparisons. On the left hand side, images from a variety of sources showing a particular process in the cell that is depicted by “The Inner Life of the Cell.” On the right hand side, a comparison image from the “Expelled” segment at issue. Surely, if the “Expelled” producers are correct, there should be no reason to find any special similarity between the image on the left that comes from XVIVO’s film and the image that comes from “Expelled” versus any of the other images on the left. See for yourself. It also appears that other parts of “Expelled”’s animations have been taken from other sources, to which John Wilkins has a connection! Yet Premise Media is suing XVIVO, seeking a declaratory judgment in Texas! This sounds like venue shopping or “forum shopping," since XVIVO is in Massachusetts. UPDATE: ERV has a copy of the complaint and a summary. She also includes a new video, that she speculates has replaced the XVIVO-copied video in the final film. UPDATE (April 19, 2008): The footage copied from XVIVO was apparently removed from the film before yesterday’s public release. ...

A group of about twenty people went to the Jefferson Memorial at midnight (it’s open 24/7) on Thomas Jefferson’s birthday to dance silently (with iPods) in celebration of freedom, only to be forced to leave by the Park Police. This exchange then occurred between participant Brooke Oberwetter and a member of the security force: GUARD: Exit, exit, exit. Lady, I’m not going to tell you again. OBERWETTER: I’m just…what did we do? GUARD: Exit. Exit, now… OBERWETTER: What rule are we breaking? It’s against the rules to dance? GUARD: Yes it is. Read the sign inside the memorial. It says quiet. OBERWETTER: I’m standing here being very quiet. GUARD: You’re dancing in here. That’s disorderly. At that point, Oberwetter allegedly asked “Why?” and was arrested. She was taken to jail for the next five hours and charged with “interfering with an agency function." (Via Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog and The Agitator. The Agitator has further coverage here, here, and here.)

Wesley Elsberry points out that Ben Stein has reported in an interview that he was approached for the “Expelled” project, described more or less as it finally came to be, back in 2006. Part of the pitch was that he was shown XVIVO’s “Inner Life of the Cell” video. Yet in April 2007 (a month after the “expelledthemovie.com” domain was registered), Mark Mathis obtained the cooperation of Genie Scott, P.Z. Myers, and other participants by pitching the nonexistent film “Crossroads,” about the intersection of science and religion, from “Rampant Films,” which had an innocuous website and an address at an empty apartment complex in Los Angeles. Stein’s interview provides further evidence that “Crossroads” was a dishonest subterfuge and that the “Expelled” crowd fully intended to use XVIVO’s film in their movie and did not commission their copy until after William Dembski was sent a cease and desist notice in September 2007, delaying the film’s release from February to April. See Wesley’s Austringer blog for more details.

ERV reports that Mike Edmondson, who was listed as the animator for “Expelled,” has left his employment with Premise Media and asked to have his name removed from their website. (UPDATE: It looks like Edmondson probably was responsible for the “Beware the Believers” YouTube video, but not the ripoff of the XVIVO film. Good for him for cutting ties with these liars and thieves.) (UPDATE April 21, 2008: It’s been confirmed that Edmondson made “Beware the Believers.") She also points out that it is William Dembski who observed that “Expelled”’s producers set aside budget for copyright infringement lawsuits. And that Jonathan Wells is helping with the foot bullets by claiming that “Expelled” produced their version of the XVIVO film in 3 months with one guy (where it took XVIVO a team of people 14 months). Looks like ERV is the blog to watch on this issue. She’s also the one who documented that William Dembski knew well that he was violating XVIVO’s copyright.

At Richard Dawkins’ blog, David Bolinsky of XVIVO explains the extent of the copyright infringement and reveals a previous copyright infringement action against William Dembski: To the anti-ID community which is giving XVIVO support in our ideological battle against the microcephalic apostates of “Intelligent Design”: XVIVO created The Inner Life of the Cell for Harvard, through fourteen months of painstaking examination of how a myriad of systems, functional structures and proteins in a cell, could be depicted in a sweeping panoramic style of animation, reminiscent of cinema, that fundamentally raised the bar on the visualization of molecular and cellular biology for undergraduate students. In depicting what we did, other than merely maintaining the intent of the syllabus, we needed to edit like mad. A cell has billions of molecules, millions of active functional proteins and tens of thousands of structural elements separating, sequestering and joining compartments and systems into a functional whole. An initial foundational decision process of our creative vision, consisted of editing out 95% of the contents of our cell in order to gain, for our virtual camera, a vista to visualize what elements we left in. The decisions we made blended aesthetics with science. They were not made lightly, nor were they made without extensive consultation with researchers at Harvard, and an extensive body of literature, including protein data libraries and new findings by Harvard researchers. Given the vast number of structures to be removed, and given the structures remaining “on camera”, whose positioning and relationships, both aesthetic and functional, needed to remain true to the function and beauty of molecular biology, it is inconceivable, mathematically, that the animator hired by EXPELLED’s producers, independently and randomly came up with the same identical actin filament mesh XVIVO depicted in one scene, which had never before been rendered anywhere in 3D! It is astonishing that among well over a dozen functional kinesins from which an animator might choose, we both chose the same configuration of kinesin, pulling the same protein-studded vesicle, on the same microtubule! Can YOU believe we coincidentally picked the same camera angles and left in the same specific structures in the background, positioned with the same composition? Equally astonishing is the “Intellgent Design” treatment of these and other proteins surfaces, which XVIVO derived using procedural iso-surface skinning of the PDB cloud data of our proteins’ atom placement. There are an infinite number of possble “correct” solutions to that problem. Coincidence? Given their “access to the same literature” we had, where Graham Johnson at Scripps so brilliantly worked out the real motion of kinesins, I am simply blown away that the “Intelligent Design” animators slavishly made the hands of their kenesins move exactly as we did, even though we intentionally left out the stochastic Brownian motion which actually characterizes the tractive force and periodic pedicle placement of these tiny motivators. We simply did not have the time or budget to render these, and a dozen other details, to the level of insanity we would like to have done! This was, after all, an underfunded proof-of-concept piece. The cellular biology that serves as “filler” material, between scenes copied from Inner Life, is riddled with biological errors. Imagine “Intelligent Design’s” depiction of protein synthesis without ribosomes! To Mr. Dembski: The only reason I am involved in this discussion is because I do not want the reputation of my company, hard-earned as it is, to be sullied by even oblique affiliation to your sort of smarmy ethics, if only through works of ours, purloined to fit your agenda. Last year you were charging colleges thousands of dollars to give lectures showing a copy of The Inner Life of the Cell, you claimed you “found somewhere”, with Harvard’s and XVIVO’s credits stripped out and the copyright notice removed (which is in itself a felony) and a creationist voice-over pasted on over our music (yes, I have a recording of your lecture). Harvard slapped you down for that, and yes there is a paper trail. One can only assume that had we not taken notice then, we would be debating The Inner Life of the Cell being used in EXPELLED, instead of a copy. You have enough of a colorful history that Harvard, in its wisdom, decided to ‘swat the gnat’ with as little fuss as possible. Imagine our surprise earlier this month, to see our work copied in a movie trailer for EXPELLED! And you are in the movie too! Not quite a star, but brown dwarfs are cool. XVIVO has no intention of engaging alone, in asymmetrical fighting against an ideological entity with orders of magnitude more resources than we have. That might make great theater, but would resemble a hugely expensive game of whack-a-ID. Boring! It makes me happy, though, that you decided to implicate your friends in print, on your blog (http://www.uncommondescent.com/legal/expelled-plagiarizing-harvard/#comment-229619), in what is legally, malignant infringement, since you no had doubt discussed with EXPELLED’s producers, Harvard’s previous legal infringement action against you, the Discovery Institute, where you are a fellow and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where you teach. Once we uncover the EXPELLED animation dollar trail, and bring it to light, we will have even more fun. The sublimely ridiculous claim that EXPELLED uses completely original animation, in light of copying our work so closely that a budget was reserved to pay for an infringement suit by Harvard, is delicious! Why should I try to take you guys down when you are doing such a splendid job yourselves? For free! So go ahead and release your movie. Just keep track of how many tickets you sell. We may just find that data valuable, too. David Bolinsky For more on David Bolinksy and the animation see: (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/147)UPDATE (April 12, 2008): P.Z. Myers comments. Blake Stacey also has a nice post summarizing the copyright infringement issue. UPDATE (April 19, 2008): The footage copied from XVIVO was apparently removed before the film’s public release yesterday.

An article by Philippe Sands in Vanity Fair sets out the evidence that the legal framework set out to justify aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay also caused the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that those responsible are guilty of war crimes. Ironically, the actions the Bush has taken to guarantee immunity from prosecution for these actions makes the case stronger for international war crimes prosecution, meaning that if any of these responsible individuals sets foot outside of the U.S., they could be at risk of seeing justice done. (Via The Daily Doubter.) ...

I’m sorry that I just came across this excellent speech by Matthew LaClair recounting his experiences with David Paszkiewicz which was published in Freethought Today in October 2007, reprinted by the Friendly Atheist blog on January 6, 2008. It’s probably the best concise summary of what happened and the subsequent events.

XVIVO LLC has sent a copyright infringement warning letter to Premise Media about the computer animation that appears to have been based on XVIVO’s “The Inner Life of a Cell.” Some have speculated that “Expelled”’s release was moved from February to April because it had used the XVIVO film directly (just as William Dembski and other Discovery Institute fellows had been doing in public lectures), and they used the time to re-create the animation on their own. The letter says that XVIVO considers the segment in the film to still be close enough to be an infringement of their intellectual property rights, and demands: That Premise Media, Rampant Films, and its officers, employees, and agents remove the infringing segment from all copies of the “Expelled” film prior to its scheduled commercial release on or before April 18, 2008; ...

Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a K-8 charter school run out of the headquarters of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota and run by an imam, Asad Zaman, teaches Islamic studies and has mandatory prayers led by a non-student. See, Christians–this is what the separation of church and state legally prohibits schools from doing with your tax dollars. Get it? UPDATE (April 11, 2008): Very many conservative bloggers, including Michelle Malkin and the morons at Stop the ACLU, are protesting TIZA and asking why the ACLU isn’t doing anything. In fact, the ACLU was on this issue before any conservative bloggers were, though they are hampered by the lack of a plaintiff. These bloggers are blatantly expressing their hypocrisy. If the ACLU was so much as sending a warning letter to a charter school promoting Christianity, they’d be protesting it. But since it’s Islam, the ACLU can’t possibly do enough. ...