Bob Dylan: People Claiming I Plagiarized Them Are Pussies

from the meow dept

I know two things about Bob Dylan. First, my father loves him and thinks he's the kind of lyrical mastermind that makes puppies weep or something. Second, man does that guy like to contradict himself. Mike recently wrote up a more general piece about how copyright law goes against how we as a people create and mentioned in passing how Bob Dylan is often cited as a gift bestowed upon the masses by copyright, despite his appropriation of others' work in his lyrics. Well guess what, Mike? Bob Dylan thinks you're a pussy!

Yes, reader redrum writes in about a wonderful story in which Bob Dylan flatly states that those who have accused him of plagiarism are "wussies and pussies."
"Meow I would not feeeeel, so all alooooone!"
Image source: CC BY 2.0 No, not like that. He meant it in the demeaning ignorant way, proving his power over prose with such eloquence I haven't seen since college, when a stoned fraternity brother explained to me how awesome hazing is. In any case, the interview apparently went much deeper than simple misogyny.

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine for its Friday edition, the influential singer-songwriter made his first public comments on the accusations, saying that in folk and jazz music "quotation is a rich and enriching tradition."

"Everyone else can do it but not me," he complained. "There are different rules for me."

It's a fair point by Dylan, I think. I mean, so what if he appropriated lyrics like "I'm not quite as cool or forgiving as I sound" almost verbatim from the biography of a Japanese mobster? That seriously isn't a big deal. And, yes, perhaps it seemed kind of strange when Dylan offered the world a painting exhibit he said was from scenes of his travels, when they were actually scenes from other people's photographs. But big deal. That's often how culture works. No harm, no foul.

The problem, of course, is that there are some people who think this kind of appropriation isn't okay. That it takes away from culture, rather than adding to it. That words have the right to be owned and art should be protected. One such person, who would disagree with Bob Dylan in this case, is Bob Dylan. As we've previously discussed:

He didn't just filch songs from other people's repertoires; he stole their arrangements. (As late as 1992, he lifted Nic Jones's arrangement of Canadee-I-O, wholesale and without acknowledgment.) He did this on both sides of the Atlantic. The great Martin Carthy, who has also just turned 70, taught him Scarborough Fair, which Dylan then recycled as Girl from the North Country. 

But he treated his own songs as private property: what's yours is mine and what's mine is my own. The assertion of his individualism involved in "going electric" was in part a way of defining Dylan entirely as an individual artist and therefore as the sole owner of his own songs. 

And that's the Bob Dylan we disagree with. Of course appropriating words, or photographs, or whatever as pieces to a larger cultural output is the way folk music works. And art. And writing. And film. We all stand on the shoulders, to some degree, of those that came before us. It's a good thing. As much as Dylan is contradicting himself, he's correct to push back on those accusing him of plagiarism. But he might also have to revisit his own views on the way people use his work as well.

Filed Under: bob dylan, copying, culture, music, plagiarism

DailyDirt: Journalism FAIL

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

While journalists are expected to follow a certain set of standards or code of ethics, that's not always the case. Every now and again, someone breaks the rules and gets away with it -- if only temporarily, since they usually get caught in the end. One famous example is former U.S. journalist Stephen Glass, who had fabricated many articles while he was working for the magazine The New Republic in the 1990s. (Apparently, he's now fighting for the right to practice law in California, after he was denied a license in 2007 on moral grounds.) Here are a few more examples of bad journalism.

• Jonah Lehrer, who had blogged for Wired for several years and was recently hired (and then fired) by The New Yorker, reportedly fabricated quotes and recycled or outright plagiarized parts of articles. While Wired had initially agreed to keep Lehrer on as a features writer, after carefully examining a number of his posts, the magazine just recently decided to end its relationship with him due to his failure to "meet WIRED editorial standards" or to "follow basic good journalism practices." [url]
• Ryan Holiday, marketing director at American Apparel, calls himself a "media manipulator." He wrote a book called "Trust Me, I'm Lying" on how to exploit the media by lying. Even worse, he used Help a Reporter Out (HARO) and pretended to be an expert on pretty much everything -- by lying, of course -- and managed to fool reporters from MSNBC, ABC News, CBS, The New York Times, and more. He claims it was all part of an experiment. [url]
• Margaret Wente has been accused of plagiarism -- copying the words of another Canadian columnist for her own article in 2009 about genetically modified foods in Africa. She has responded to the allegations, but her employers have also disciplined her (without revealing the details of her punishment and obviously not firing her). [url]
• Poynter.org has a wrap-up of the year's journalistic failings (so far) -- which it calls Journalism's Summer of Sin -- and it prescribes some measures for news organizations to prevent (and deal with) plagiarism and fabrication. The year isn't over, though, so place your bets on how many more journalistic fumbles will occur before 2013. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: ethics, haro, jonah lehrer, journalism, labvertisements, lying, margaret wente, plagiarism, ryan holiday, stephen glass

DailyDirt: Cheaters Never Prosper?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

It's hard to really know how many cheaters are actually caught taking shortcuts. Generally, people assume that the ones who get caught are representative of all cheaters -- but maybe the smart cheaters are never caught... and really do prosper. Here are just a few known cheaters... and not all of them have faced up to any consequences.

• South African Olympian Cameron van der Burgh set a world record in the men's 100-meter breaststroke (and won a gold medal), but later he admitted to using more dolphin kicks than are officially allowed. He's not the only one doing it, but that doesn't make it right (just like peeing in the pool). [url]
• In the UK, Charles Ingram cheated "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" with a simple system of having his wife cough at the correct answers. Ingram and his accomplices were found guilty of cheating by a jury, but maybe if they'd used a slightly less obvious audible system... [url]
• The 2012 National Scrabble Championship was marred by a boy caught palming blank tiles. Cheating at Scrabble is considered such a rare event that a fake wunderkind caught red handed made national news. [url]
• Surprise: students enrolled in online classes with Coursera have been found cheating with dozens of cases of alleged plagiarism. Students don't (currently) earn any real credits from these classes, but that will likely change someday. So when more online classes actually have value, there will be far more than a few dozen cheaters. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: cheating, game shows, millionaire, online classes, plagiarism, scams, scrabble
Companies: coursera

Band Calls 1st Amendment A 'Buzzword' In (Plagiarized) C&D To Mitt Romney Over (Licensed) Use Of Song

from the campaign-supernova dept

It's election season, people. You know what that means. It means irritating and/or hysterically innaccurate advertisements. It's the time of year when roughly ninety percent of your social media "friends" become "fully vetted political pundits" to the point where you want to "throw them out of a five story window if only you could reach through your computer and get to them." And, because any creator you might believe in apparently understands that we need a little comic relief at times like this, it's that special time when politicians use tunes at campaign events, resulting in angry musicians (because they're also "fully vetted political pundits" to the point where you want to...well, you get the picture).

The list for this kind of nonsense runs long. There was that time when Heart insisted McCain stop introducing Sarah "Barracuda" Palin with their well-known song. Then there was a magical moment where former-Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh sued Republican Congressional candidate Joe Walsh (...seriously) over the use of one of his songs. Tom Petty went after Michelle Bachman. Survivor's Frankie Sullivan went after Newt Gingrich. Even Hollwood Ronald Reagan got into it with The Boss by hillariously using Born In The U.S.A. as some kind of pro-America rallying cry (when the song's message is the exact opposite).

Which brings us to Mitt Romney, who apparently played Sliversun Pickups' song Panic Switch at a campaign rally (again, hilarious) only to find a cease and desist letter in his mailbox. 

The rock band Silversun Pickups this week served Romney's campaign with a cease-and-desist order after it says Romney's campaign used its song "Panic Switch" at an event earlier this month.

"Seems as if the GOP is once again whimsically ignoring our great nation's laws to do whatever it wants to do, and shooting itself in the foot in the process," band representative Ken Weinstein said in a statement.

Interestingly, as with many of the aforementioned examples, Romney may well have done nothing of the sort. Most of these campaigns have a blanket license to use such music and, while the cease and desist letter reportedly also included a mention of Trademark law, they're likely covered on both ends. The blanket license takes care of copyright, and the fact that I'm fairly certain Mitt Romney is not about to launch a new career venture which in any way involves him performing as a musician should nix the trademark issue. Even if the band disagrees with Mr. Romney's politics, that isn't cause for them to exclude his campaign from using what is covered by the license for which they paid.

For what it's worth, this isn't the first time Romney has had to deal with this kind of thing, either. Both Al Green and K'naan have had recent scuffles over the use of their music. For you young kids out there, Al Green made the music your parents were listening to as you were being conceived. And for you older folks, K'naan, judging solely by his name, is apparently an alien from Rob Reid's Year Zero universe.

In any case, from the band's perspective, given the speciousness of their claims, they probably would have been better served simply voicing not only their disagreement with the Romney campaign's politics, but pointing out the absurdity of using a song with a title that is the very antithesis of a campaign working feverishly to demonstrate that it is in control. What they should not have done is hire an attorney who wrote their cease and desist letter, full of smug educational quips about copyright and trademark law, and that referred to such serious topics as the First Amendment and Fair Use in this manner:

"We anticipate that you, or your general counsel, may respond to this letter with a letter of your own using all those neat lawyerly words like “First Amendment,” “fair use” and “parody.” Please know that none of those buzzwords (or the law they represent) works for you here."

As Public Knowledge rightly points out, these are not buzzwords. They are also not "lawyerly" words. The First Amendment is more of a Constitutionly term and Fair Use and Parody are Case-Law-ly terms. Snide degredation does not a good legal notice make.

On the other hand, perhaps the band's legal team can find respite from those snide remarks in the fact that their cease and desist letter may have been plagiarized from the attorney that wrote his letter for Joe Walsh when he was (I still can't belive this) complaining about Joe Walsh. Lest your sweet little minds think that this is too funny to be real, I give you this quote from Silversun Pickup's lawyer, Tamara Milgros-Butler:

"When I needed to write a cease and desist letter, I did what almost any contract lawyer does many times day and I looked at historic forms," she says. "I simply loved the tone of this language (in the Walsh letter). And geez, I looked back when my boss raised the issue and ran a red-line comparison. While the language isn't precisely the same, I borrowed liberally from Peter's letter."

Asked whether she regrets what she did, Milagros-Butler says "I regret not looking back or thinking more. I regret not thinking more backwards to see if it was our letter or someone else's. If I thought about it more, I would have realized that we didn't represent Joe Walsh."

God bless America (please don't send a C&D letter, Irving Berlin. I totally loved White Christmas. Also, you're dead, so you probably can't hear me.).

Filed Under: copyright, fair use, free speech, license, mitt romney, performance rights, plagiarism, silversun pickups

Solving Potential Plagiarism Through Mutual Respect And Understanding

from the jazz-pickles dept

Back in June, we shared a story in which a comic artist had claimed that another artist had "ripped off" her idea. We even took the time to remind people that multiple comedians can come up with the same joke independently of each other. These situations are nothing new in comedy. In such situations, the person who feels ripped off has a number of choices. They can threaten to sue the other person. They can use social mores to shame the other person. Or they can go a totally different route -- one in which everyone comes out a winner.

Over at the Bizzaro Blog, home to Dan Piraro's Bizzaro Comic, Piraro writes about a recent incident he had over one of his recently published comics.

Here's a bit of a sticky wicket I thought you Jazz Pickles might find interesting. After my pantsless doctor cartoon appeared in papers the other day I got an email from my friend and colleague, Dan Reynolds. Dan is a terrifically talented and successful cartoonist whose work I have always admired. It seems my doctor cartoon is uncomfortably close to a very popular one that he did some years ago.

In most similar situations we report on here, this is the part where the person complaining usually sends a legal threat of some sort. But that is not what happened. What happened was something refreshing and quite out of the norm, at least in these circles. Both artists realized that people can come up with the same joke independently and then brushed the incident off.

Did I steal this cartoon? Of course not and Dan did not accuse me of it. Cartoonists with a large readership and an I.Q. above 75 (me) are not foolish enough to publish a stolen cartoon, especially from someone with an equally large readership (Dan R.).

...

Oh well, these things happen. Dan R. was a gentlemen about it and readily accepted our apology. We're all still friends. :o)

What amazes me here is that two grown adults actually acted like adults. Why can't we have more of these kinds of interactions? Even when the idea was almost identical, both were able to look past that and see the reality of the situation.

In response to the unfortunate incident, Piraro has decided to take a bit more precaution in the future. He has decided to do Google image searches of future ideas, just to make sure that he doesn't step on the toes of anyone else. However, he recognizes that even that plan has a glaring weakness.

Cliff and I work together frequently so we committed to redouble our efforts to Google-Image-search all of our ideas to make sure no one else had gotten there first. The thing is, though, we decided to retro-search this one and could not find it under any of the titles we could think of. “Backwards Doctor Coat Cartoon” was our most obvious choice but Dan’s cartoon didn’t show up in that search. So we still would have been screwed.

So even if he does a search, there are no guarantees that someone else's work would come up which matches his idea. Under these circumstances, how much effort should one allow? I would say that even doing the initial search is probably more than enough. It is more than you are actually required to do. Yet, there are some people out there that seem to think that is not enough -- that a person in Piraro's situation should have just known about that other comic. But as Piraro has shown, it is just not possible to cover all your bases.

All in all, this is a great experience for all the things it can teach us. 1) Acting like adults when a situation arises results in mutually beneficial results. 2) Recognizing that no joke is a unique flower incapable of being copied unintentionally is a wise move. 3) That even the best Google-fu cannot prevent you from unintentionally copying someone else's joke. Sounds like some pretty good lessons to me.

Filed Under: dan piraro, dan reynolds, plagiarism, respect, understanding

Social Shaming Works Faster Than Legal Recourse

from the uh-oh-lawyers dept

In the right hands, social media is a powerful tool. It can send canine-themed rappers to Palin-land, for instance. Some governments have even taken to the internet to publically shame tax evaders. But now we have a story of a couple of authors who found that imploring their well-connected customers to shame plagirists on their behalf may be a better route than legal recourse.

Reader drew writes in about the story of two fiction authors, John Scalzi (whom you may recognize from when we wrote about his free ebook experiment) and CJ Cherryh, who found that there were people selling the authors' works under a different name on Amazon's site. They sent their DMCA notices and waited in frustration as their publishers worked with the site to get all of the infringing works taken down. This admittedly has to be frustrating for victims, but fortunately the authors weren't content to sit on their hands and be pissed off.

"Both writers also posted a request for their Facebook fans to write scathing one-star reviews of Mr. Farabi's books, and warn others about the scan. By noon on Sunday, July 15th, all six of "Mr. Farabi's books" had been pulled, and were no longer for sale on Amazon.com. Score one for irate fans and copyright holders!"

The point here is that if you truly connect with your fans, they will be willing to fight on your behalf in situations such as this, and that is a far cry from the theory that everyone on the internet simply wants everything for free. But it takes work and a willingness to connect with your fan-base, so that the fans are willing to support you in this manner. Still, that work pays off in the passion those true fans will demonstrate.

And content creators, be they authors, musicians, or movie-makers, have no greater ally than a passionate fan-base. Those fans, as demonstrated here, are a more effective anti-piracy weapon than any legislation you can dream up, because while some companies on the internet may or may not be interested in acting as the "copyright police," they will sure as hell listen to their customers.

Filed Under: cj cherryh, infringement, john scalzi, mores, plagiarism, social shaming
Companies: amazon

Apple CEO: When Others Violate Our Patents, They're Copying Our Hard Work; When We Violate Patents, The System Is Broken

from the double-standards dept

Apple has certainly been quite the aggressor over the last few years when it comes to patents, so it's interesting to hear that, at the latest All Things D Conference, CEO Tim Cook appears to have a bit of a double standard. You see, when others infringe upon Apple's patents, he insists that they're somehow copying all of Apple's hard work, and that's unfair. Cook uses a ridiculous plagiarism analogy:

He compared patent infringement to signing one's name on a painting that someone else put energy into finishing. Cook stressed the importance of companies building their own stuff so that Apple would not be "the developer for the rest of the world."

Kinda like, you know, how Apple "signed its name" to the graphical user interface developed at Xerox PARC? Or the mouse developed at SRI? Or multitouch browsing, developed by a bunch of other folks prior to the iPhone? Sure, Apple improved on all of these things, and many other things as well, but Apple is famous for taking the developments done elsewhere and merely putting a nice final consumer-friendly coat of paint on it. No doubt, this is an important step, but it's ridiculous to pretend that Apple has come up with the various ideas it has and no one else could have possibly developed the same things. And, of course, plagiarism (claiming credit for something you didn't do) is an entirely separate issue from infringement (using an invention/creative work without authorization). So it seems silly to even use that analogy.

Of course, then Walt Mossberg brings up the fact that Apple is, in fact, the target of many patent lawsuits as well... and suddenly Cook's tone changes, insisting that those cases are different:

“The vast majority of those are on standards-essential patents,” he said, adding that it's an area where today's patent system is "broken."

Now, to some extent he's correct that patent battles over "standards-essential" patents are particularly nefarious, but it still seems like quite the double standard to insist that the patents that Apple has asserted against various makers of Android tablets and smartphones aren't equally silly and destructive to basic market competition. Apple makes great products that people love. If only it would let those products compete fairly in the market, it could save money on the bruising legal fights it's involved in around the globe. Cook admitted that patent battles are "overhead" and he wished the fights weren't so costly. Of course, that would be a lot more convincing if the company hadn't launched so many patent battles itself.

Filed Under: all things d, gui, multitouch, plagiarism, tim cook
Companies: apple

Which is Worse -- Sharing With Attribution, Or Plagiarism Without?

from the spot-the-thief dept

At the end of last year we wrote about the case of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, former Federal Minister of Defense in Germany, who lost both his post and his doctorate when it turned out that he had plagiarized portions of his doctoral thesis. Now the journal Science is reporting another possible case:

German Education and Research Minister Annette Schavan is facing allegations that she plagiarized parts of her dissertation, published in 1980. A Web site, called schavanplag (in German) has listed 56 incidents in which the anonymous accuser says Schavan copied phrasing from improperly cited sources.

That on its own might not be so remarkable, were it not for the fact that there have been at least two other recent cases of plagiarism by German politicians -- Silvana Koch-Mehrin in June last year, and Jorgo Chatzimarkakis a month later.

Now, I don't know what exactly the positions of all those German politicians were on unauthorised sharing of files online, but I somehow doubt that any of them approved of it. And yet they seem not to have had any qualms about copying other people's work and passing it off as their own.

Beyond the double standards involved, there's another important point to be made here, I think. Plagiarism is about denying creators attribution that is rightly theirs. When people share files online, by contrast, there is no attempt to pass them off as their own work -- the attribution is always preserved, because otherwise people wouldn't know what they were downloading.

That's probably why online sharing can sometimes increase the sales of the works involved: it's a way of signalling that you enjoy something -- and a personal recommendation is perhaps the most powerful form of marketing around. Plagiarism, on the other hand, is a conscious attempt to boost your own reputation by depriving others of the recognition they are due, with all that this implies for lost rewards.

So which is worse? And which one should German politicians be most concerned about?

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Filed Under: annette schavan, germany, karl-theodor zu guttenberg, plagiarism, schavanplag

Mark Twain: Copyright Maximalist Who Also Believed That Nearly All Human Utterances Were Plagiarism?

from the contradiction-or-satire? dept

In copyright circles, Mark Twain's speech to Congress in 1906 is well known as being the point at which he made clear his desire that copyright should be vastly expanded to make sure his kids kept earning money:

My copyrights produce to me annually a good deal more money than I have any use for. But those children of mine have use for that. I can take care of myself as long as I live. I know half a dozen trades, and I can invent a half a dozen more. I can get along. But I like the fifty years' extension, because that benefits my two daughter, who are not as competent to earn a living as I am, because I have carefully raised them as young ladies, who don't know anything and can't do anything. So I hope Congress will extend to them that charity which they have failed to get from me.

He later argues for infinite copyright:

The English idea of copyright, as I found, was different, when I was before the committee of the House of Lords, composed of seven members I should say. The spokesman was a very able man, Lord Thring, a man of great reputation, but he didn't know anything about copyright and publishing. Naturally be didn't, because he hadn't been brought up to this trade. It is only people who have had intimate personal experience with the triumphs and griefs of an occupation who know how to treat it and get what is justly due.

Now that gentleman had no purpose or desire in the world to rob anybody or anything, but this was the proposition--fifty years extension--and he asked me what I thought the limit of copyright ought to be.

"Well," I said, "perpetuity." I thought it ought to last forever.

Some have argued, somewhat convincingly, that Twain as actually doing a somewhat brilliant satire, which not everyone understood. That would be awesome, if true, and there are some hints that it may very well be. However, it does appear that Twain himself was somewhat more conflicted on this particular issue. Siva Vaidhyanathan has an entire chapter (pdf) of his excellent book, Copyrights and Copyrwrongs, devoted to Twain's fluctuating views on copyright. However, he does suggest that later on in life -- from 1898 onward basically -- Twain appeared to be a strong maximalist.

So it's interesting to then discover, via Joe Betsill, that during that same period, Twain argued that "the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism" and that this wasn't a bad thing. The specifics are that Twain was writing a letter to Helen Keller, who a decade earlier (at 12-years of age) had just gone through a controversy in which she was accused of plagiarizing heavily from another book for her own work, The Frost King. Twain wrote to Keller, with whom he was friendly, after learning about the plagiarism accusations:

Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that "plagiarism" farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul—let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten centuries and ten thousand men—but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some degree, and we call it his; but there are others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite—that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.

Then why don't we unwittingly reproduce the phrasing of a story, as well as the story itself? It can hardly happen—to the extent of fifty words except in the case of a child; its memory-tablet is not lumbered with impressions, and the actual language can have graving-room there, and preserve the language a year or two, but a grown person's memory-tablet is a palimpsest, with hardly a bare space upon which to engrave a phrase. It must be a very rare thing that a whole page gets so sharply printed on a man's mind, by a single reading, that it will stay long enough to turn up some time or other to be mistaken by him for his own. No doubt we are constantly littering our literature with disconnected sentences borrowed from books at some unremembered time and now imagined to be our own, but that is about the most we can do. In 1866 I read Dr. Holmes's poems, in the Sandwich Islands. A year and a half later I stole his dedication, without knowing it, and used it to dedicate my "Innocents Abroad" with. Then years afterward I was talking with Dr. Holmes about it. He was not an ignorant ass—no, not he; he was not a collection of decayed human turnips, like your "Plagiarism Court;" and so when I said, "I know now where I stole it, but whom did you steal it from," he said, "I don't remember; I only know I stole it from somebody, because I have never originated anything altogether myself, nor met anyone who had."

To think of those solemn donkeys breaking a little child's heart with their ignorant rubbish about plagiarism! I couldn't sleep for blaspheming about it last night. Why, their whole lives, their whole histories, all their learning, all their thoughts, all their opinions were one solid rock of plagiarism, and they didn't know it and never suspected it. A gang of dull and hoary pirates piously setting themselves the task of disciplining and purifying a kitten that they think they've caught filching a chop! Oh, dam—

That was sent in 1903. Yet just three years later, he was arguing to Congress that ideas were property and should remain in the possession of those that created them forever:

So if I could have convinced that gentleman that a book which does consist solely of ideas, from the base to the summit, then that would have been the best argument in the world that it is property, like any other property, and should not be put under the ban of any restriction, but that it should be the property of that man and his heirs forever and ever, just as a butcher shop would be, or--I don't care--anything, I don't care what it is. It all has the same basis. The law should recognize the right of perpetuity in this and every other kind of property.

Now, plagiarism and copyright are not exact equivalents -- though there can (and often is) significant overlap. But it's difficult to see how the same person can reasonably argue both points. Perhaps that lends some credence to the claims that the Congressional hearing was, in fact, satire. Either way, I think I like the 1903 Mark Twain waxing poetically on how all ideas are plagiarism much more than the 1906 Mark Twain whining about how his children are too useless to do anything and need to keep making money from his books long after he's dead.

Filed Under: copying, helen keller, mark twain, plagiarism

Lindsay Lohan's Lawyer's Loopy Legal Argument Laced With Lifted Language?

from the why-don't-you-come-to-your-senses dept

Now here's a weird one. THResq has a report concerning Lindsay Lohan's lawyer in her ridiculous case against the rapper Pitbull. That lawyer has now been accused of plagiarizing most of a recent filing which tried to argue that Pitbull's First Amendment rights weren't an issue in the case. If you don't remember, Lohan sued Pitbull because he had a lyric in a song that reads "I got it locked up like Lindsay Lohan." According to Lohan's lawyer, this violates her publicity rights under NY state law. Publicity rights, of course, are a relatively recent phenomenon, found in various states, that are now being abused widely by semi-famous people to try to stop others from talking about them.

Lohan's lawyers seem to be particularly enamored with using publicity rights claims in new and increasingly bizarre ways. She's sued E*Trade for one of its commercials that refers to a baby named Lindsay and says she's a "milkaholic." Despite no other connection to Lohan, her lawyer insisted this was a violation of her publicity rights. Then there was the time that she threatened the jewelry store from which she took a necklace, leading to her arrest. What was the threat about? Believe it or not, the claim was that the video store surveillance footage was a violation of her publicity rights. Yeah.

Either way, Pitbull's lawyers filed their motion to dismiss (pdf) not too long ago, arguing that Lohan failed to state a legitimate claim:

... the First Amendment bars her claims because the Song is protected artistic expression. Moreover, the incidental use of Ms. Lohan's name was not for advertising and trade purposes and therefore is not proscribed by Section 51 as a matter of plain and unmistakable law. Ms. Lohan's remaining causes of action are equally baseless, since she has not -- and cannot -- allege facts warranting injunctive relief, monetary damages for severe emotional trauma or a finding of unjust enrichment.

Honestly, this should be a pretty easy case to dismiss, and I'd be surprised if the judge let it go much further. However, Lohan's lawyer, Stephanie Ovadia responded to that with an opposition filing that rambles on bizarrely about a variety of topics from the First Amendment to publicity rights to trademark law to consciousness (seriously, see below), with little effort to actually explain what that has to do with the case. For example, there are random discussions of "non-verbal expression," tattoos, inciting lawless behavior, trademark infringement, celebrity look-alikes and whether or not any of that is covered by the First Amendment. Of course, absolutely none of that has anything whatsoever to do with the case at hand or the issues it raises. Nor does Ovadia even attempt to try to connect these issues to the case.

There are also just some outright bizarre parts in the filing:

The threshold of consciousness is the dividing line between something that can be processed by the conscious mind and something that enters the subconscious mind without any such processing. A hidden message is not intense enough to produce a sensation but has sufficient intensity to influence the behavior and mental processes of one's mind. The decisions the conscious mind makes are based upon the knowledge and reasoning skills one has developed through experience and education....

It goes on in the same manner for a few more sentences, never once even coming anywhere near a legal point, nor referencing any part of the case.

Pitbull's lawyers quickly hit back with a filing (pdf) and exhibit (pdf) of their own, noting that Lohan's filing doesn't actually address the pretty clear legal issues raised in their initial motion... and also pointing out that perhaps the reason the filing is so nonsensical is because nearly all of it is plagiarized from random web sources, which they highlight in a handy chart. That bizarre quoted text above apparently comes from the Thinkquest library, which appears to be a project of the Oracle Education Foundation, and whose content is "created by students around the world who have participated in a ThinkQuest Competition."

Other sources include a bunch of copied paragraphs from the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression (who, I would guess, would likely come down on Pitbull's side in this case), the LA Times, the Association for Corporate Counsel's website, some presentation about publicity rights found on Docstoc, some law firm websites and a variety of other sources. I'm not a lawyer, but it's not hard to read the filing and wonder what the hell Ovadia was thinking. As THResq wonders, beyond helping to make sure that this case is unlikely to live much longer, the cutting-and-pasting throughout the legal filing might actually expose Lohan and Ovadia to copyright infringement charges themselves, especially from the law firms whose content was copied.

Update: Eriq Gardner, who wrote the THResq story has an update:

Reached for comment, Ovadia's office pointed the finger at Anand Ahuja, of counsel at the firm, who wrote the brief.

Ahuja was contacted too and says that he turned in "4 or 5 drafts to Stephanie, who looks like somehow by mistake submitted the first one."

He adds that typically his first draft includes footnotes and references and that it gets amended along the way, but that the submission was turned in past the judge's deadline, stripped of his footnotes, and that it was Ovadia's job to review it before signing and filing the document.

None of that makes Ovadia or her law firm look very good. First, I love the finger pointing between the two lawyers in the press. It's like reality TV inside a law firm. Second, Ovadia's name is on the filing. It doesn't matter if Ahuja wote it, she should have read it and realized that it was almost entirely nonsensical. Third, I don't know how they write "drafts" but cutting and pasting huge chunks of totally irrelevant information -- including a treatise on consciousness, just doesn't seem like a particularly reasonable practice.

Filed Under: copyright, lindsay lohan, pitbull, plagiarism, publicity rights, stephanie ovadia