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Creationists Violating Copyright
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."
This is going to be interesting...lawyer mill vs the number 1 law school in the country. Not only that but the poster above makes an interesting point about fair use (although I think it was more intended as flaimbait). Probably not fair use in this case though as they didn't "comment on" the movie ,they simply took a part of it and worked it into their own creation, derivative work if I understand correctly. Regardless of the legal merits of the situation, I hope the media at large pick up on this, after they posted fake DMCA takedowns to silence their opponents they go and do this...not exactly ethical, even if it was "legal."
-Buck
I'm not a lawyer, but sue them for what? Don't you have to prove that you lost money when you are suing for damages? Clearly what the creationists did was illegal/immoral, but it seems like people are blowing this our of proportion. I think what will happen is the creationists will remove the video and "sort of" apologize for plagiarism - by sort of, I mean they'll blame some scapegoat who "didn't know better, and has been removed from the organization. "
I truly want to apologize for the criminal stupidity that perpetrated this.
No, I don't work for DI or have any association with that particular group. I've been down this road before on Slashdot, but it bears repeating: I am a religious person. But I am not a "Christian", in fact, I am scored by Christians for the most part. I don't particularly believe in "intelligent design", because it doesn't make sense to me. I prefer to see God as a scientist rather than a "Creator". Anyone who has studied any kind of religion in college (most people at my old community college took comparative religion for an easy humanities credit) will realize that the Bible is full of allegories and euphemisms. Who are we to say that Adam and Eve were the first creations of God? Maybe they were the end result of an experiment being run by God; the first to understand, so to speak, what they are and their place in the natural order of Earth.
To think that we sprung up out of the ground is preposterous to me. Fundamentalist Christians will point to the Bible saying "God created Adam from the dust of the earth" as proof of intelligent design. Is it at all possible that "the dust of the earth" is the primordial ooze scientists refer to? Could, as Robin Williams said, the passage "God said 'Let there be light'" be a euphemism for the Big Bang?
I do believe in science as well; we have made some amazing advancements in the last 20 years. I am excited to read of a new scientific breakthrough or a new understanding of something that seemed miraculous not 10 years ago. Now, if you will all excuse me, I'm going to go back to reading. Putting something as ethereal as my religious beliefs into words is not nearly as easy as it might seem. And thank you for reading what to most would probably seem to be a psychotic episode put into words.
"Slapping lipstick on a pig does NOT make it Natalie Portman. Paris Hilton, maybe, but not Portman." - UncleTogie
Well, if you really wanna know... It's not so much the worship of spaghetti, it's the worship of a spagetti MONSTER.. that flys!! And the fact that, if you legalize religion in schools, then you must legalize it for ALL gods - Old, fatherly, white men in clouds, Flying Spaghetti Monsters, Cthulu, Zeus, Osiris, all of 'em...