Blue Collar Scientist

The producers of Expelled, having been notified by XVIVO (pdf) that their movie infringed on XVIVO’s copyright of an animation of the inner workings of a cell, responded to that by almost immediately filing a lawsuit against XVIVO. This, of course, is well known, since it happened more than a week ago.

Yoko Ono, Sean Ono Lennon, Julian Lennon, and EMI Blackwood Music Inc, have apparently decided not to allow Expelled’s litigious, lawsuit-happy producers strike the first blow in their case. They have filed a lawsuit against Premise Media Corporation, C&S Production LP and Rocky Mountain Pictures, Expelled’s producers and distributors, seeking an injunction preventing them from continuing to use John Lennon’s song Imagine, and also seeking damages.

This story hits a little closer to home than most lawsuits involving big-ticket celebrities and movie distributors. BCS contributor Iatra Polygenos, back when she was a freshly-minted veterinarian, was part of a team that treated one of Yoko Ono’s cats. Iatra is loyal to her clients, even clients that really belonged to her clinicians at a time before she really had clients of her own, so the BCS family is rooting for the plaintiffs in this case, just out of sheer biased loyalty.

As many people have pointed out, plagiarists don’t steal from just one source. If you do it once, you are going to do it again, and again, and again. Plagiarists are serial offenders by nature.

I’m not sure what is going to happen next, but it seems likely that the next shoe to drop will involve Expelled’s alleged stealing of video from PBS. Or it might have something to do with Expelled’s use of the song All these Things That I Have Done, by The Killers, which has also been said to be a result of plagiarism.

What’s sad about these cases is that it is really simple to get rights to clips and music. For the most part, all you have to do is call up whoever owns the rights, and ask for a license to use the material. A fee is negotiated, usually off a fairly standard fee system, you pay it, and you get to use the material¹. The only reason someone wouldn’t do this if they were going to use three major pieces of other peoples’ work in a movie that opens in 1,052 theaters would be - well, that they are bad, evil little people.

1. Granted, the licensing fee for a song of the significance of Imagine would be very high. [↩]

It looks like the producers of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed have won the triple crown if dishonesty. They lied about their movie to get interviews with Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, PZ Myers, and others. They have repeatedly cheated to keep people they don’t like out of screenings of the movie. And now, they’ve been accused of copyright infringement, of stealing and slightly altering a clip of cellular activity used in the movie.

XVIVO produced an elaborate, and much-watched movie depicting intracellular activity:

And now Peter Irons, XVIVO’s attorney, has sent a letter to the producers of expelled. Some highlights:

This letter will constitute notice to you, as Chairman of Premise Media Corporation, of the copyright infringement by your corporation, and its subsidiary, Rampant Films, of material produced by XVIVO LLC, in which XVIVO holds a copyright.

It has come to our intention that Premise Media and Rampant Films has produced a film entitled “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” which is scheduled for commercial release and distribution on April 18, 2008. To our knowledge, this film includes a segment depicting biological cellular activity that was copied by computer-generated means from a video entitled “The Inner Life of a Cell.” XVIVO holds the copyright to all the models, processes, and depictions in this video, and has not authorized Premise Media or Rampant Films to make any use of this material.

We have obtained promotional material for the “Expelled” film, presented on a DVD, that clearly shows in the “cell segment” the virtually identical depiction of material from the “Inner Life” video. We particularly refer to the segment of the “Expelled” film purporting to show the “walking” models of kinesic activities in cellular mechanisms. The segments depicting these models in your film are clearly based upon, and copied from, material in the “Inner Life” video.

….

This letter will also serve as notice to you that XVIVO intends to vigorously and promptly pursue its legal remedies for your copyright infringement, unless and until Premise Media, Rampant Films, and their officers, employees, and agents comply with the following demands:

1. That Premise Media, Rampant Films, and its officers, employees, and agents remove the infringing segment from all copies of the “Expelled” film prior to its scheduled commercial release on or before April 18, 2008;

2. That all copies of the “Inner Life” video in your possession or under your control be returned to XVIVO;

3. That Premise Media notify XVIVO, on or before April 18, 2008, of its compliance with the above demands.

Well. Why is this so not a surprise?

I’d imagine complying with #2 would result in a heck of a lot of promo DVDs being shipped to XVIVO.

For more on Expelled, have a look at Scientific American’s reviews, especially the one from Michael Shermer.