Expelled Plagiarizing Harvard?
| April 10, 2008 | Posted by Patrick under Expelled, Legal |
Premise Media has just been slapped with a “cease and desist” letter from XVIVO, the group at Harvard that produced the video clips from which the still images at the top of this thread were taken. They are alleging copyright infringement (not to mention blatant plagiarism). The full text of the letter from XVIVO’s lawyers can be read at:
ERV: Expelled Epelled for Plagiarism
ERV: About That Cell Video in ExpelledThe letter makes it clear that if the offending video clips are not removed from the film and all promotional materials by the opening date, immediate legal action will be taken to stop the release of the film.
Thanks to Allen MacNeill for bringing this accusation to our attention.
This accusation first became public when PZ Myers claimed that the Expelled movie used the Harvard “Inner Life of the Cell” animation. We’re currently investigating this claim and hopefully we’ll have more information in the next couple hours. But when asked about this, Jonathan Wells had this to say:
Expelled does NOT use the Harvard animation. The producers paid a professional to create a new animation that is more accurate than the Harvard one (based on current knowledge of cellular processes). Any similarities between the Expelled animation and the Harvard one are due to the fact that both animations depict many of the same processes.
189 Responses to Expelled Plagiarizing Harvard?
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Sparc
Near as I can tell none of the stuff XVIVO mentions is protected by copyright. Copyrights exclude methods, ideas, processes, styles and a lot of other things that go into a copyrighted work. For instance, styles are protected by design patents. These protect a unique “look & feel”. Software algorithms can be patented with utility patents. You can’t protect styles and algorithms with copyrights. The only thing I can see XVIVO actually claiming is style, processes, and algorithms. If they think they can protect those with a copyright they have another think coming.
But it is not a crime, it is only alleged at this point. And what if theaters don’t show Expelled because of intimidation, and the case goes to court and Expelled wins. Then Expelled could sue the theaters which had a contract to show the film, but caved-in and broke that contract under pressure from people without a case.
I say again, “roll the film!”
Allen MacNeill tells us that “…immediate legal action will be taken to stop the release of the film.”
However, over on Dawkins’ blog (I don’t know how to do the link thingie, so take my word for this, check it out, or leave it–as you wish) there is a letter which is allegedly from David Bolinsky (the XVIVO medical illustrator who supposedly filed the suit along with the request for a preemptive injunction [IANAL, so my terminology here may be mistaken] to prevent the showing of Expelled) addressed to William Dembski, inter alia.
In it, Mr. Bolinsky says, “So go ahead and release your movie. Just keep track of how many tickets you sell. We may just find that data valuable, too.”
If this is indeed from Mr. Bolinsky, he is now apparently giving permission to release the movie, in spite of his earlier request that it not be released. One might argue that Mr. Bolinsky is using sarcasm in this letter. However, that is not at all clear to me, and it may not be clear to Expelled’s producers, either.
DaveScot wrote:
As far as I can tell, the only claim they have would be style. You just can’t steal a computer graphics process or algorithm just by looking at the output. Even a “reverse engineering” of certain motions and materials would result in very different processes to produce and render them. To obtain an algorithm would require espionage.
to Lutepisc: no one has sued anyone or filed for any injunction.
They’ve got nothing on that video. It doesn’t even look hat much like the Harvard one.
Thanks, Jack.
It looks like I was (at least!) an hour behind on my post. I just now read DaveScot’s post “Bolinski…Backed Down…” which does a better job of saying “all this is moot.”
If it has not been mentioned already, some here maay wish to check out PZ Myers’ revised views.
Angry Old Fat Man. Now that’s a great name. Haha.