Slashdot Mirror
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."
Harvard was created so that they would be able to copy it. You know part of a bigger plan.
That's clearly "fair use" by information wants to be freeeee!-ist standards.
It's a good thing they're a lawyer mill. Because Harvard's going to sue the shit out of them.
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.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
(C)Copyright 4000BC God
All rights reserved
Reproduction other than by the means provided for in your licence agreement is prohibited
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Doesn't it make more sense to believe that Harvard stripped out the creastionist commentary from the video and slapped on a copyright notice? It would be far too complex to edit a Harvard video to add commentary, thus I must go with this simpler explanation and blame Harvard.
hey fuckhead, good way to put more spin into the slashdot mix. i'll fucking troll this bitch motherfucking cunt. slashdot is a faggot stronghold with fuckheads like kdawson the sack of shit leading the way.
how does it make you feel cmdrdildo that kdawson is making a mockery of your site? why don't you kick this bitch in the balls and send his bitch ass packing?
KDAWSON IS A FUCKING BITCH AND A CUNT
God created everything.
Trev - used to be interesting. Honest.
The topic should be "Are Creationists Violating Copyright?" Unless a Judge has ruled
They ignore common sense, who could have guessed they would ignore other peoples copyright?...
And God also created this video for us. No, really. What? Of course we didn't copy it from someone else!
I'll probably go broke from the number of times they'll force me to watch Golden Compass, just to make them unhappy.
...the film was originally intelligently designed. Then it evolved.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Fuck the creationists, those bunch of dumb-ass bitches, ...
every time I think of them, my trigger finger itches,
They want to have their bullshit...taught in public class,
Stephen J. Gould should put his foot right up their ass!
Yes, but parody is fair use. What else could one conclude other than that the laughably ridiculous antics of Creationists are nothing more than a parody of science?
I can already tell we'll see the double standard from people commenting on this story: people who download music and other copyright material every day without paying but will somehow be outraged by this terrible display of disregard for copyright. How dare they!!
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
So fuckwads like this group will be gone so this world can actually advance? Better yet wow about a land swap for them? This is open to all assbackwards "religious" people who'd rather live in the fucking stone ages. Take a vote and let them find a place to call home, rest of the world pays for their move while compensating the people who want to move out of that land. Then we'll wall them off with a 50m wide perimeter around their new land and let them devolve into their little theocratic state anyone tries to climb out or cross the nomans land is hosed on sight? Rest of the world advances while that country dies off in 3-5 generations from inbreeding and stupidity from the survivors who manage to live through the my god is better than your god initial phase.
What to choose, what to choose...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
They are creationists: that's what they do. Take the work of one and claim that another had created it. Haven't you hear what they're claiming about mother nature's creations?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
The whole agrument is nuts and in truth doesn't justify a response. "God made it that way" ends all arguments for them so there is no rational thought behind their position. The real fact is there's an ocean of evidence for evolution and the true age of the Earth on one side and "God did it" on the other side. Where's the debate? The only evidence presented is heavily distorted scientific evidence. Gee sedimentary layers were left over from the great flood. Why are there different layers and different forms of life in each layer? No good response. Cells are very complex highly organized and self repairing, only a genius could have planned them. Or maybe it took a few billion years of trial and error? Why is this fictional date that some one came up with hundreds of years ago so important? It's not mentioned in the Bible he deduced it by adding up ages of the men listed in Genesis, some of them living nearly a thousand years which presents it's own set of problems. There is no form of evidence that will ever change their minds so there's no debate. They can complain all they want that science won't change but that's like trying to talk some one with a winning poker hand into the fact they just lost. Science doesn't need faith they have something far better, the facts.
I have used this video in my intro biology class, telling them it is an absolutely marvelous video and that by the time they graduate they will understand the complex processes depicted. I have spoken through it, thereby adding my own narration. Does this mean I am going to get sued too? In finding this video for my class I noticed many versions out there on youtube and other video sites, ones which had the copyright notice absent already, so does this mean I would get sued for showing those instead of the original? It's not like they posted the video on a site representing it as their own, it was part of a powerpoint presentation and I really doubt there is solid grounds to show they did anything wrong. Just because they are pushing their own agenda which the poster disagrees with does not mean they are any worse than other people making up a powerpoint presentation and not citing every graphic and video they find on the web.
So, when a darwinist copies something, it's fair-use, but if a creationist copies something it's a copyright violation? Is this "story" going to be a forum for this-group bashing that-group? It sure looks as if it is intended to be such, as it was modded up enough in the "Firehose" to make it to Slashdot's front page. What always gets me is that one group will flame another group, then call it bigotry if that group flames them back, or disagrees with them. This goes for copyrighted material users, file-sharers/industry, race, religion, Operating Systems, etc. Just read the posts above this one and you'll see a lot of bashing already in progress. See bigotry at its' finest. I wouldn't be surprised if my post gets modded down.
Those Bastards!!!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Unfortunately, you'll have to find someone else to do the ass-kicking. Stephen Jay Gould hasn't gone to see his maker, but he is dead nonetheless.
also, i cannot be sued for illegal downloading because i simply have no money to buy this amount of movies (by your logic, not the MAFIAA's).
Isn't it better that they removed the logo?
Otherwise it might appear to some person watching that the ramblings were actually created by harvard.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
They are obviously blinding themselves to the true nature of the Universe! God didn't create it, we did about 7.2 million years from now! And I can't believe nobodies brought up the instrument of the creation, his noodly appendage himself!
Shh.
Creationism is not science, it is a religious belief. God reportedly laughs at false prophets like this and is amazed at how stupid people can be.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Man, the RIAA will be PISSED when they figure out those Harvard guys used Yanni's music without his permission...Oh what a wicked circle of lies and deceit!
Our position is that:
1)Despite the godless, secular nature of Harvard, God none the less inspired them to create the original video
2)Through means of divine communication assigned us the copyright and moral rights, as only the progenitor of the universe can.
3)With His assent, we subsequently created a derivitave work without blasphemy.
4)Profit er...
To call the Discovery Institute's use of the Harvard video merely "copyright violation" overlooks the more fundamental problem, because the DI did not just copy and redistribute the content without permission, but in fact (a) distorted and misrepresented the meaning of the content via overdubbed narration, and (b) knowingly misrepresented the authorship of the content. The former is fraud (though perhaps not in a legal context), and the second is plagiarism (which does satisfy the legal definition).
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.
This is a slippery slope my dear friends!
If they get away with copyright infringment, they'll be just like the vast majority of slashdotters, and we can't have slashdotters and creationists sharing any similar traits!
no wait, I have a better one...
first copyright infringment, then TERRORISM! Lets nip this in the bud right now! Sick the RIAA on them!
Protector of Capitalist views,
Meorah
God spontaneously made the copyrights disappear.
They could make that argument work for 45% of the US population.
Ed
Realistically speaking, they chose to throw "city" in the title to further anthropomorphize EVERY.FUCKING.THING. As if "making" the workings of the universe in our own image wasn't enough (and then calling ourselves made in the image of the creator, har har), anything that steps outside of this narcissistic boundary is deemed heretical and vile. Too bad that same self-centered view often leads to the very acts that the deistic religions condemn.
Also too bad that there is no way a respectable judge would rule in favor of the defendant here. It isnt exactly education when the point of the video is to expose a world view based completely (ostensibly) on faith and opinion, not things that can be proven or at least supported via the scientific method, the thing that makes science SCIENCE.
God's on their side, so it's okay!
up to now, they were in the bad role, the attacker, and the scientists the victims. Now if "Science" attacks them in law, they will posit as victims :(
Herve S.
Seem some thin skinned bible thumpers are at work here. Wonder if there's a link war going on. I also think the headline misses the real crux of the matter and that's the plagerism and misrepresentation. Copyright is just the icing on the cake. Let's see what score I get in my own little experimental post.
Great job giving a quacky research girl - who fights the creationists more vitriolically than they fight evolution - the status of "source" for this article. She's obviously smarter than I, since I can't figure out what it is she does, other than "biology research". She also has obviously already made up her mind (as is typical of any 24 year old grad student) that she has to work in "the right" field.
I, on the other hand, can be perfectly content in the knowledge that the earth is billions of years old (and God created it in 6 days some odd thousands of years ago), that the expanding universe is indicative of the big bang (and God was around before that, if it happened), and biological evolution is definitively stated (though possibly not on quite as macro a scale as a proponent of natural selection would have you believe). I'd like to be able to logically explain how all those beliefs can coexist, but since my primary job is to pay the mortgage and not reconcile conflicting philosophies, I'll leave that to someone else.
Still, it always boggles my mind when I hear researchers fighting about their beliefs. As a researcher you should be preaching a very teeny portion of the time and searching a great majority of the time. Also be sure to let me know when this girl moves out of the blogosphere and into the peer-reviewed journal stage. Maybe then slashdot can link to a real source article.
Protector of Capitalist views,
Meorah
If you're a creationist, everyone in here is a troll. What, with the science-voodoo and all.
My UID is prime. Hah!
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
From the video on TFA it seems that the video is being used in some sort of lecture. From that isn't it legal for schools and universities to use copyrighted material with out permission as long as it is being used for an educational purpose? Let my repeat myself I am not a lawyer. I believe the only thing they needed to do was put in the source if even that but I am not sure. Is anyone familiar with this?
I see a few people are adhering to the meme under the American definition of "freedom," i.e. 'free' to do what you want within parameters defined by what you personally find acceptable.
You know they're going to try it.
I dont know which jerk modded parent troll but s/he should go in and reply to this thread to nullify his/her point. if s/he has a brain, of course.
in case you didnt understand, the parent is an excellent post on arrogance and self-centeredness of mankind. We are as such to the extent that we can think that an entire existence, zillions of galaxies in an expanding universe were created 'in the image of' and 'for' some obscure primate specie on a rim planed in a single galaxy. compare earth to milky way galaxy, and you'll see that even at this scale that 'in our image' crap is totally null. dont even dare matching up tiny earth against the entire universe.
Read radical news here
Either you're a scientist, or you're religious. You cannot be both.
./ joke? Whatever, I screengrabbed it for posterity! :)
Either you are committed to the scientific method, or you accept things based on faith. Again, no room for both.
If a hypothesis cannot withstand the rigours of scientific method, it must be discarded. When somebody refuses to let go of a cherished belief that has no basis in fact, they cannot justifiably claim to be a scientist.
No doubt I'll be pummelled here by the Christian Scientists for the "sin" of mentioning the bloody obvious, but that is their problem, not mine: I'm not the one pretending to be a scientist while professing belief in superstitions.
CAPTCHA = atheism. Some kind of
If they can be fined per infringement, does that mean that if all slashdotters download it they have infringed tens of thousands of times and will get sued out of existence?
Wouldn't that be nice...
Considering that current law states that copyright is valid until 70 years after the author's death, that copyright will expire in 2036.
Of course, since there's this other person who also died in 1966, the copyright period will probably be extended before it expires.
Perhaps some kind of DRM on harvard's videos is in order ?
Are slashdot writers truly this hypocritical ? If nobody gets to enforce copyright (especially not riaa) then why does slashdot get to ?
Considering that the vast, vast majority of creationists are not members of the Discovery Institute, this headline seems slanderous.
This is a little like having the local Atheists Club killing puppies, and running the headline, "Atheists Kill Puppies".
If you think the DI is evil for doing this, then you'll agree that all the clips of it on Youtube have to be removed, right? right?
Another example of copyright as an obstacle to innovation. Even pygmies should be permitted to build on the shoulders of giants. Keep that copyright off our backs and let the conversation develop.
Have a look for The staggering stories of Ferdinand De Bargos.
It was inspired by a BBC(?) Saturday morning kids show redubbing of The Flashing Blade. Corking stuff.
Mind you, that was done with the acceptance of the copyright holders or used PD material
So that's good right? This is a tough one. They're violating copyright but they're also creationists. If only one side was a little darker so I could tell who to root for.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Did anyone stop to think that they may have intentionally done this? (1) To take real science and slap a creationist's context on it and (2) any legal action taken is publicity and an attempt to "silence" "alternative" "theories" of the origin of man.
lord help us all ...
DI must be the premiere creationist org today - right?
some "Atheists Killing Puppies" != all "Atheists Kill puppies"
It seems DI is using Harvard's picture of a tomato and pointing out 'they say "tomayto" and we say "tomaato"'.
god did not hold the camera, not did he hire the narrator nor he spend time editing the video. guess who created the hammer? MAN .. so he can hammer out these /god/ ideas out of the people that annoyed him in his thoughs.
Dont Judge The situation by the Misfortunate. Goga.
Anyone can make up any idea and call it science. Are there any peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals about intelligent design? Have any experiments to test intelligent design been designed and carried out to see what the result is?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Can we expect Slashdot to report every time someone gets caught violating copyright, including P2P file-sharers?
One look at who posted this tells me all I need to know about why this is on the front page. *yawn*
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Oh the whackos are good at piracy. My ex wife is a right wing Christian loony evangelical umm I ran out of adjectives, anyway, I remember her spending hundreds of dollars buying CD's loaded with Christian music - every single one of them a pirated copy.
But I guess if you're doing "god"'s work, it doesn't matter if you rip people off. Funny how the pastor drove a mercedes and the wife was always going around in gucci and luis vuitton stuff, though. Especially in this poor country.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I can't remember if the Harvard copyright notice was in there or not. Not much reason to edit it out, since the short video doesn't say anything one way or the other about evolution, and Harvard was found as a religious school. There was some guy who gave the introduction to the video, who talked about how wonderfully complex cells were. But obviously looking at this video, most of the things that we see are extremely simplistic caricatures of stuff that actually happens in a cell. I mean come on, some stick figure with big old goofy shoes hauling a big bag up a pipe? That doesn't scream evolution at me.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I thought Slashdot was against copyright protections, so what do you guys care? You've never cared about private property or intellectual property rights before. Or have the Nerds-On-High decreed that you should make exceptions for religious groups?
Don't get me wrong, I think these people clearly ripped off someone elses work and should pay out the ass, but I don't think this community has any credibility on this.
If nobody gets to enforce copyright (especially not riaa) then why does slashdot get to ?
Harvard can enforce copyright through the traditional means. They can initiate a lawsuit against the Discovery Institute for infringement of copyright and violation of Harvard's exclusive right of distribution.
Enforcement of the law is handled by the legal system. DRM is not enforcement of copyright law. It is the use of technological means to limit the replication of media files.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
From TFA, they stripped out the original copyright notices.
If a scientist who believes in Evolution and breaks the law, can I say Evolutionsts are to blame? Holy flame content batman, I did'nt realize me sitting at home being a creationist caused me to break the law.
Or, as Arthur C. Clarke put it so well: "How dare we be so arrogant as a species to assume we are the only intelligent ones in the whole vast universe?".
As to the modding, the fundies got in here early and mod-bombed most of the intelligent posts (which were the non ID ones, natch).
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
When I read the title "Creationists Violating Copyright", I thought to myself "I'm a creationist....I violated a copyright? Did someone patent a holy book?" Then I read the headline. I'm so relieved I wasn't actually violating any copyrights.
Slashdot editors: please be more careful with the titles. I know the majority of slashdotters don't care for Creationism, but one can infer from the title that there is a level of zealotry against Creationists that isn't really there in the whole majority (I would think).
How relevant is this post outside of the context of making fun of religion and religious people?
Take a Michael Moore movie. Let's take Sicko. Now reedit it, redub it and use it to prove that the health care system in the US is on top of the world. It's possible, no problem.
That's the difference here. How'd you feel if you make a documentary, then see it turned inside out and upside down to "prove" the opposite of what you documented?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
One thing I am invariably confused by whenever Slashdot posts an anti-ID story is whether the commentators here believe Intelligent Design/ Teleology is *necessarily false* and logically impossible because it is non-materialistic and invokes an external teleology to explain what is happening in the natural universe, OR whether Intelligent Design has been proven wrong by the cumulative empirical evidence gathered in the last two hundred years? (In my opinion, Darwin's Origins inaugarated a research program rather than definitively proved anything at all. After all, how could a primitive pre-critical biology prove anything without getting into the nitty-gritty of biochemistry, microbiology, and laboratory experimentation?)
In other words, do we need to leave our armchairs in order to figure out the Neo-Darwinian synthesis is true, or could we figure that out by a mere deduction from the philosophy of science we have chosen? Cuz, sometimes it sure sounds like teleology is ruled nonsense/pseudo-science before it even gets out of the gates and says anything about alternate interpretations! Which is remarkable to me. I am not sure how we can justify eliminating a Designer/Creator from the get-go, if that is what some are doing.
Why do you think he created Earth in the first place? In fact, we're just here for his entertainment. To quote Ephraim Kishon: "Lord, are we still the chosen people?" "Why sure. You're funny."
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
[...]
Unless we accept, as one commenter above argues, that the narration was the core of the copy written material, I don't think their actions pass muster.
But I think that's because it's reproducing too much of the copy written material and not putting in enough of their own. Copywritten? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Dear Slashdot community,
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 *
The dumbasses you referred to and creationists in general are dumbasses for a reason. While most of humanity has continued to evolve, for some reason, it does not appear to have happened with creationists. Perhaps all their praying has resulted in them being granted the right not to evolve. I sometimes ask evangelicals "Since you don't want to have the ability to evolve, would you transfer to me your rights of evolution? But I haven't yet had any takers.
Get the DI version. This time give it a narration about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, and name it something like "Free Sex Money" so that everybody downloads it. Credit it to the Descovery Instantoot to make it obvious (at least to DI) where it was taken from. Add a text file to the torrent saying what was done and why.
Since it's making fun of an existing work (whether stolen or not) it's a parody, and so protected as free speech from both Harvard and DI.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
So they used a video in some crappy PowerPoint presentation? Looks to me like the blogger went ahead and posted the entire thing to the internet, potentially reaching a much larger audience. Just let the idiots have their fun without getting the collective geek panties in a bunch.
The ex-MST3K guys seem to have had no problems releasing riff tracks for movies, so why didn't the creationists just do that? And if they advertised their mods as riff tracks, they might have gotten a wider audience for their product.
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
And if you're going to do propaganda then make it good AND make it digital.
No doubt some legal hassles will ensue for the "Discovery Institute" -- however any legal dust-up just allows them to get publicity ect.
The motive here IMHO was to create this video and get it out on the web - where hundreds of thousands of their devout followers can download it for their own use. Case closed - this video will now live on as a "educational" tool to be shown in bible clases etc for years to come. Bits are bits - and if you can steal them and "repurpose them" you now have the web as your world wide delivery system.
Its not the years, its the mileage
Hi,
./ like or are in favor of ID, but in order to criticise it, check the facts first. It's OK to be critical of new ideas and I'm very supportive of critical analysis of scientific theories, but check the facts before posting a story.
I'd like to clarify this thing a bit: Discovery Institute does not actively support creationism, it is common institute for advocates of Intelligent Design. This is a common misunderstanding to think that ID == Creationism, but when you study its past a little better, you see that first active proponents had no connection to creationist movement. I admit though that creationists may have used ID material to boost their program, but ID does not rely on Creationism, it's different and focuses on the scientific side of the evolution debate.
I'm completely sure that very few of the readers of
I would actually go as far as to say that Science is largely built by people using the representations of others.
If one scientist reads about a scientific experiment of another scientist. The scientist decides to try the experiment. The scientist sits down and repeats the experiment and carefully writes down each step he takes in the experiment. When he is done, he has a notebook full of information and test results that are surprisingly similar to the first scientist.
So, we now have the case where scientist A has a notebook that says I did this and got these results. Scientist B has a notebook says I did this and got these results. The two notebooks are surprisingly similar.
Is Scientist B a copyright violating plagiarist?
There is one very subtle point to be made. Yes, there is an argument that Scientist B should cite Scientist A. However, this is countered by the idea that nature is the source of the information. Scientists may intentionally distance themselves the original experiment to make sure that information from the first experiment does not affect the second experiment; in which case it is easy to accidentally lose the citation.
Science was built by people repeating the same experiments over, over and over again. When they repeat the same experiments, they come up with the same results. If we had a lawsuit every time one scientist repeated an experiment of another simply because the notes on the experiment came out similar, then science would halt dead in its tracks.
Lets say Scientist A and Scientist B had different theories about what caused a result set. In that case the two scientists would have different narratives for the existing data. They then would put together a third experiment to test different predictions.
It sounds likely that this Discovery group is engaged in crap science. There really is no experiment which can ever prove of disprove the disagreement between evolutionists and creationists. The fact that creationists can stick their narrative on the works of other scientists proves this point.
We may hate creationists with every fiber of our being. They may be a thorn in our sides. But do we really want courts controlling the natural give and take that exists in the scientific community because we hate creationists? Do we really want science to be driven by our hatred of a group that is on the fringe?
If Harvard's lawyers send the DI a cease & desist letter then I'm sure the DI will spin this into another fable of how the "big bad Darwinian dogmatists" are persecuting them. It's the way the DI has been spinning things since Kitzmiller v. Dover; play the victim. It's all about public relations with them, not science.
Why do you think they made talk-radio host/movie critic/culture warrior Michael Medved one of their senior fellows just recently? It's not like they are going to put him to work in a lab looking for God in a bacteria's tail.
Can some body mod this up? How come it is modded troll?
However if your contribution in the lab was as a tech running the experiments that people like the author of TFA designed, I could easily see why you wouldn't catch that link. So your bad there... but hey, awesome job showing yourself to be an ignorant tool who thinks he can argue vaccine science because he once had a summer job washing glassware and running the autoclave in a lab near folks who understand it. Just because the lab where you worked did research that doesn't mean you did.
And it shows.
I know, there might be some 'splaining to do to the big G man in the sky when their time comes (something to do with a few sentences beginning "thou shalt not..."), but they do it all the same anyway.
'Got milk?' idea? Steal it, stick it on a t-shirt, then sell it for profit. Got Jesus? And while you're at it, why not do the same with SubWay, Ford, Superman, even Watty Piper's 'The Little Engine That Could'.
That was just one Google Images search and (consequently) one t-shirt seller. Going to a second site, there's theft from Spongebob Squarepants, Abercrombie & Fitch, Jim Bean, Deal Or No Deal, Pepsi Cola, Reese's Peanut Butter, Hot Topic offensive cute animal, Desperate Housewives, Hershey's Chocolate, Lost, Staples, Heroes, Pop / American Idol, and an Apple theft with iTunes.
Thou shalt not steal? Screw that, that last paragraph's output even had the audacity to put its OWN copyright notice on many of the t-shirts!
As their site says...
Ever wondered What Would Jesus Steal? Everyone else's ideas. Because when I want to do something socially abhorrent like force my ideas down someone's throat, I like to be a hypocrite when I do it too. And stealing someone else's hard work is just the way to do it. Hey, it worked for Eostre / Easter...
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
"Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: " 'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.'" Mark 7:5-7
"Intelligent Design = Rules taught by men
"Evolution" = Man's attempt at understanding the rules put in place by God.
~Sticky
/All the same mistakes, 2000 years later.
Painful childbirth was eve's punishment for eating the apple, I love pointing this out to pregnant Christians when they discuss epidurals. I once pointed it out to a Christian obstetrician, that was priceless.
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).
No sig today...
And people wonder why I, an athiest
Nah, if you were, you'd spell atheist correctly. I'll wager you're a religious nutbar trying to toss doubt into science.
Trolling is a art,
I thought the whole point of creationism was the deliberate ignoring and denying of prior art?
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Or, as Arthur C. Clarke put it so well: "How dare we be so arrogant as a species to assume we are the only intelligent ones in the whole vast universe?".
That's only necessary if you take an overly literal view of "in the image of God". Mainstream theology doesn't exclude the possibility of life on other worlds. Since man was made in the image of God, asking what that means is like asking "what does it means to be human?". That's a deep question but I suspect most people's answers wouldn't focus on the biological details.
Their main argument is that the cell is an engine, just like a boat engine (which is designed). The cell has a tail (flagellum) that spins like a propeller to make the whole cell mobile. This propeller-tail needs gears and other parts for it to be operational. They argued that evolution favors working parts over non-working parts, and a complete and functional motor could not be useful until all the parts are there, therefore a cell could not have evolved.
Their other argument (I'm not making this up) is that you can tell just by looking at an object that it is intelligently designed. When you look at Mt. Rushmore, writing on a beach, and (sigh) life.
They had smart-looking people with impressive titles.
a creationist?
Novel concept.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Oh, btw, if you go directly to Harvard to view this video, you will see this notice:
Gee. For educational use only. I guess by the definition of our submitter, a conference which includes a session led by a Ph.D. couldn't possibly be for educational use.
And did you know that the initial versions of this video only had a music sound track? The creator of this video talks, David Bolinsky, talks to an early version of this video here. And it is very possible that the sound track used at the Dembski presentation pre-dated the later soundtrack(s) added by Harvard. In any case, this would not have violated the "For educational use only" policy.
But don't let the facts interfere with your smear campaign.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
Funny how it's fair use when you like the cause and copyright violation when you don't.
because religion is, basically, silly - like taking the tooth fairy seriously. So, the religious have resort to arguments that are alogical, like believe or i will kill you, or, since I don't understand it, it must be the majesty of god.
So, everytime science gives something an explanation, the argument that god exists cause we dont understand something is reduced a little. That is why the religious are aways against science - cause it always reduces the range of "fantastical" things they can point to as unexlained, and therefore evidence of a diety.
(BTW, the fact that someone can believe in silly nonsense (religion) and be a good person or a good scientist just shows that humans are complex, not simple )
Of course, those aren't being sold. But neither is this creationist video mashup. Apparently they're just posting it to youtube, and showing it at their little conferences or whatever.
What bothers me about this story is that if the Discovery Institute was pro-Darwinism, this would have been at most a minor footnote. Someone would have said "hey you need to attribute this you bonehead" and they would have fixed it and all would have been well.
... even in the name of "science."
But because they have unpopular conclusions, well, that makes what they did a terrible thing. But their conclusions are not the point: if they had properly attributed and followed fair use rules, then this would have been legal. Of course, people STILL would have complained. It's the DI and their views their views that are the perceived problem, not that they violated intellectual property. And I find that to be just a wee bit dishonest, personally.
Not that I am defending DI. If they messed up, they messed up. I don't care either way. I just hate witchhunts
For the record (for those that haven't read the bible) Mark 7 talks about men not wanting to stone disobedient children so they find a loophole, like most people use Galatians to pick and choose what bigotry and hatred they like and discard the rest.
Intelligent Design = for idiots dumb enough to take the bible literally/authority
Science = for people that have enough of a brain to realize bronze age mythology provides the secrets to the universe.
Intelligent Design is just old school creationism wrapped up in a cheap tux and filled with big scientific words to make it look scientific despite it being absolutely stupid.
These creationists will use any means to get their agenda across in which the scientific method is used as cannon fodder and truth is collateral damage (when christians say "Jesus said I am truth and thats the truth" is when truth becomes the cannon fodder but thats for another time)
Intelligent Design and its bastard father fundamentalist Christianity does more than contradict biology which is its target... it also goes against geology, physics, linguistics, zoology, chemestry, mathamatics, anthrapology, history and proberbly more areas of study.
For the record this isn't the first time creationists have violeted copyright law. Me and colleagues have refuted Kent Hovind videos that he openly stated were public domain and yet got YouTube to remove videos filing copyright claims (while yes, Hovind himself was in jail). We also did parodys of Hovind which were protected under fair use, CSE flagged those too. It took a while for YouTube to restore our content but they really tried to pull out all the stops to silence all critics. It was almost like they really belived the law was what they wanted it to be because "god was on their side"
Make SELinux enforcing again!
The DI stole someone else's work, "tweaked" it a bit and passed the entirety off as their own. Theft is the issue, not evolution, Darwinian or otherwise.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Let he who has never violated copyright cast the first post.
Oh, too late.
In general, we don't tend to actually care about legality. We do care about rules, though, just not necessarily the rules that are currently law. For instance, in this case, they didn't attribute the source - in fact, they spent extra time removing attributions that were once there. In contrast, the Grey Album went out of its way to tell you exactly where everything was from, thus making it, in many peoples' minds, entirely an entirely legitimate form of art, even if it's technically copywrite violation.
I looked at several of the videos. Well done animation, and AFAIK ( at least ) not grossly false. It was molecular/micro_biology and evidently has nothing to do with evolution or ID. Unless you believe everything must. Now it's true, biology is more like history than physics where the universe refreshes ( for a particle ) every time its' wavefunction collapses. Or not. But Genghis Kan may well have been ... himself ... even if the Persians had not been trounced at Marathon. Eh?
Scientists observe existing systems and try to describe them. The concept of an scientific experiment only makes sense when there is a pre-existing system to run the experiment on or within. Such a concept is at odds with an all-powerful, omniscient Creator.
Perhaps it would be better to say engineer--someone who applies tools to design machines, or solve problems. Or perhaps even better, an artist--someone who brings something new into existence through their own creativity.
You say you are not Christian, so perhaps you believe that God does exist within a pre-built framework, and thus can run experiments. But that raises the question of what created the system and what created God. Such a belief is indistinguishable from atheism...all it does is introduce a middleman and displace the really fundamental question by one level of abstraction.
I pick this nit because "science", "scientist", "experiment", "theory", etc. are all words that have very specific definitions, and a lot of the confusion/hype/bullshit today results from mis- or vague understandings of these definitions. Too often people just slap scientific or scientific-sounding words on their chosen subject matter as a way of conferring legitimacy. IMO it is not so different from a Pacific cargo cult building runways to call back the planes of WWII. They go through what they think are the right motions, but don't understand the concepts.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Always a classic, but if you're going to quote the good MC, the least you could do is link to him as well. (And obviously, you know how to link since you linked to Wikipedia.)
http://www.mchawking.com/
If this were a debate over whether one scientific theory has more substance than another then it would just be business-as-usual, and most of us could happily sit back and wait for further evidence and research to divine a dominant theory. However, this is not a battle about theories but about ideoligies. The whole basis of modern science is that any theory is open to interrogation and disproof, and is only accepted as long as it makes more logical sense than anything else - it is, if anything, an exercise in lack of faith.
ID is founded on pursuing evidence of a theory which only makes sense when the whole body of scientifically sound knowledge is considered worthless, even though there is a much better-fitting and better-supported theory available - and this practice is the opposite of science.
People are "bigoted" against ID because it is anti-science, not because it is anti-evolution.
And, in a similar fashion, you were modded down because you're an idiot with a bag full of opinions and nothing by way of supported rhetoric. Your post was anti-debate, not anti-"Darwinist".
Meta will eat itself
who tagged a story about creationists science? Shame on you.
Let us worship Aphrodite
Even though she's rather flighty
She may not wear her nightie
So that's good enough for me!
Give me that Real Old Time Religion....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Would you want your townhall decorated with satanist art, possibly with "abandon all hope ye who enter" written on the front door?
That's not so much a religious endorsement as it is truth in advertising.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This Internet 2.1 blog for user Mildred is powered by The Cheapest Blog Host On The Internet! , the revolutionary web 2.0 metalayer. Get yours now!
...Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity...
Ok I'm done with my Ad Hominem attack. Now on to the post. I think that it is not logical to say that biology cannot be understood without understanding evolutionary theory. We are talking about mechanics here. Can you learn how to work on a car without knowing with what processes it was built? I did take Biology both in High Shcool and in College and had no problem whatsoever understanding anything without for a second even entertaining that Evolutionary theory was true in the way it was presented to me. Bear in mind that we where not discussing how bacteria mutates or how plants "became" the way they are. We learned about how cells are made up, how they reproduce, how ADP and ATP works, amongst other things. None of those things require knowing how the cells came into being. Besides, evolutionary theory doesn't even tackle that. It just states that things evolved from other things which were less fit and that the new mutation was more fit. It also sometimes takes on out origin within the species stating that we evolved from some kind of chimps or monkeys. It does not however deal with the mechanics of biology.
Uhm, no. Trying to explain biology while denying the existance of DNA would be a problem. Trying to explain biology without playing tribute to Evolutionary Theory in all its incarnations is not troublesome at all. In fact I would argue that it is better to not muddy the waters by espoising one point of view of evolutionary theory without spending the time to talk about the rifts within it and within the scientific community when it comes to it. Like for instance, how far does evolution go? Does it even explain our orgin or is it just another piece of the pie? Is there such a thing as Macro Evolution and Micro Evolution. Does everybody who beleives in evolution also beleive in speciation (that is one species evolving into an completely different species, not able to reproduce with the first species)? It's all very complicated but doesn't really help me understand the wonderful world of biology.
Pray tell, what makes the theory that macroevolutionary changes are caused by random mutations "science", and the theory that macroevolutionary changes are driven by some non-random intelligence "not science"?
Hm. Interesting proposition.
The problem with your statement is that (at least as I defined them in the above)...
Then perhaps you've defined them improperly?
For instance, evolution is not about "random mutations." Mutations themselves are selected upon from viability through adaption. This isn't just white noise. It's white noise with a selection filter that is always changing.
The causes of mutations are much more complex than the old "cosmic rays fucking with your DNA" model a lot of us were taught in secondary school. There's viral genetic migration (in which bits of working DNA are moved from one species to another via a viral vector) to transcription errors (where bits of working code get shuffled around like a deck of cards during meiosis, for instance) to cosmic rays fucking with your DNA. There are probably hundreds of ways DNA can get shuffled and moved and otherwise... well, mutated.
Note that many of these are not purely random. They start from the point of working information getting mixed up. Sometimes that leads to noise, and the resulting DNA is not viable. Othertimes, it might result in cancer, as the resulting cell is no longer capable of restraint of replication. Sometimes else, it might result in a viable cell (in the case of meiosis, a viable gamete, and later a viable zygote). In those cases, viability isn't the issue-- it's an issue of whether or not the mutation results in a phenotype that hinders or helps in the organism's current environment.
Most mutations never make it past the viability test.
Mutations are not "random." There are many layers of filters that pick the real information from the noise. Life conforms to its environment. Therefore, a mutation must fit within its environment, or it just doesn't survive.
That's not randomness at all.
And, assuming a non-random intelligence has guided our evolution, who guided *its* creation? Because obviously it is too complex to have merely evolved.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
These excuses are made up merely as an attempt at avoiding the arguments and scientific program they present.
Exactly *how* is ID "scientific?"
Is there evidence to suggest that an intelligent designer is required for life to form and evolve? So far, I've heard (and read) some hand-waving about "irreducible complexity," but in all instances, this has turned out to be merely, "I don't understand it, so God must've done it."
Addressing the shortcomings of our current understanding of evolution is one thing. Claiming those shortcomings indicate a failure of evolution through natural selection as theory is a bit disingenuous. To further claim that they point to a mystical "guiding intelligence" buggers credibility.
Basically, you are trading a natural complexity ("how did this evolve like this?") with a mystical one ("Who created us? And because they are certainly complex than even us, how did *they* get created?")
All you're doing is moving the layer of complexity back a level, and declaring that level off-limits to science. And you're doing this with no real reason. Not only is it *more* complex than *any* "irreducible complexity," but it completely misses the point about what science *is*.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
here are some other fictitious candidates where a slashdotter adds 2 and 2. iPhone users becoming obese. natalie portman featured in goatse video. DRM robot synthesizer hacked by internet worm. choose the right buzzwords, get more eyeballs.
Where else was this posted?
its strange, I never thought modern cities were designed.
The just sort of came in to being...
After all there is always Federal Provincial and municipal people fighting each other.
And many bigger cities have multiple municipalities Ottawa/Hull Toronto/Brampton/Sauga
and the politician are only there for 4 years, not nearly long enough to do anything but try and angle the growth one way or another...
There is no design
--meh--
What's missing from this incredible, enraged, mindboggling rant of a slashdot discussion is any proof whatsoever that shows that DI produced the video in question. It's not on the DI website, and the video in question is clearly someone's recording of a lecture which just includes a small portion of the video, complete with the commentary, shown on a screen behind the lecturer.
Far be it for this crowd to include facts in the discussion.
Let us look at the theory of Intelligent Design. It states that creatures are created with their features intact and for a purpose. That's how they define "design". Logically then you can disprove intelligent design by finding a single instance of a feature present in any organism that does not serve a purpose. Whales have vestigial leg bones buried inside their body. Why would a designer place them there? They have no purpose, therefore the basis for intelligent design is false. There are MANY other examples, but I just had to find one.
Yes, and every time that a system has been put forth as irreducibly complex, real scientists have found that the system can work with reduced complexity. Anyway, that would be legitimate scientific inquiry in the field of evolution. Intelligent Design posits that there is a designer, then closes the door on scientific inquiry. It's an unprovable statement, not a theory.