I wonder why no Christian reading about the lies & thievery of the producers of Expelled has seen fit to condemn these actions, supposedly in the name of Judeo-Christianity?

Yoko Ono has filed suit for stealing Lennon's music, and the creators of the animation which was copied for this movie have also filed against the producers of Expelled.

Where's the concern for the law? If Obama is expected to condemn the words of his preacher, shouldn't someone condemn the theft & lies of Expelled?

You wonder?  Really?  I commented on your accusations myself, in the first post I made.  I think I made my reaction pretty clear, frankly.

Perhaps you should wonder why no atheists have seen fit to condemn these horrid alleged crimes.

Do you think that Christians have some special understanding of the rhyme, reason, or justice of the ever-changing copyright laws in this country, or that they would recognize them as such sterling examples of jurisprudence to conclude that they were obviously God-given and deserving of such special respect that defending them against even the accusation of violation would be more important to them than what they have chosen to discuss? 

But since you are apparently willing to defend Disney Inc.'s. writing, and re-writing of the copyright laws to suit the most powerful corporations in the country, here's a little fair-use commentary on the idiocy of the whole business.  From a Christian point of view!

I know I said I wasn't going to comment on this blog anymore, but give credit to PD.  His more and more outlandish claims have created an amusing urge to respond.

PD, are you TRULY going to say, "Perhaps you should wonder why no atheists have seen fit to condemn these horrid alleged crimes." [sic] or are you going to edit your post once I, and everyone else who contradicts your outlandish claims, posts proof to the contrary? Indulge me and reiterate your claim.  Feel free to expand on that statement as well.  I anxiously await your pretension.  Because if you really think there has been no response to "these horrid alleged crimes" as you put it, by any significant group of people, even beyond your "atheists" you are obviously not paying attention to the issue at all. At least for me, I'm curious how much your position changes now that you've been given enough of a "heads up" to google  what you've said to find some fringe evidence to "support" your postion.  Its truly very entertaining. ;)

That's OK Scottso - people who say they're going to stop posting never do, so welcome back! 

Did you really think I was referring to people outside of the participants of this blog?  Oh, man....if that is your idea of a "gotcha", you have got to expand your horizons!  My reference to my own first post might have given you a clue.

You had me going though.  I went through all the posts twice, thinking "did I miss out on Scottso's vigorous defense of copyright law?":  and "beyond posting some lyrics,  did Vader post his political support of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?", before I realized what you were attempting to say.

Hilarious, man.  Yeah, I do suppose that oohchild got her information from somewhere.  And I'm sure that the truth or falsity of this accusation will be tested in places other than the blog zone of the Tehachapi News.  I didn't need to use Google for that.

Must protest against the "sic", however.  I think my usage is correct there.

By the way, have either of you seen the movie?   It is often considered good form to read a book, or watch a movie, before passing judgement on it.  

Or you may prefer to rely on its placement on Oohchild's List of Banned Movies.

Box Office records for last week,  Like I said, this movie will bomb, no one cares, it opened at #9, and will be off the chart next week, who cares?, like I said, what if the media really embraced this movie, like Moore and Gores lies,  scottso and oohchild would be on suicide watch,

http://movies.com/boxoffice

Hmmmm yes, PD, I noted the sarcasm in your first post:

"Oh my!  Someone used "Imagine" without paying the appropriate royalties?  I refuse to associate with ANYONE who ever used Napster, as well.  Someone has to stand up for whatever corporation owns the Lennon songbook now, I suppose!"

I'm left still wondering....

Thanks for the link, Starbucks1.

PD, it's rather obvious you were refering to folks outside the blog. Your response to Oochild doesn't carry any weight if you weren't.   It was fun to see if you would back down on scope or attempt to sidestep the whole thing if I called you on it.  And you did not disappoint! ;)

Why should anyone have to reiterate anything Oochild posted in her blog?  No one addressed the copyright issue because despite your sarcastic remark, its rather obviously still illegal, immoral and just as wrong now as it was when you made your silly comment.  What they have done is illegal and stealing and against the law.  I'm pretty sure "the Intelligent Designer" told them not to steal somewhere along the line.  I'm pretty sure "the Intelligent Designer" had some rules regarding fraud.  Ironic that "the atheists" are the ones to see the immorality isn't it? :)

And to compare it to Napster -- well that was a good example because Napster was sued into oblivion for having no business model beyond making it easy for people to steal music. So apparently the law is silly and not worth following in your opinion. Based on your first post.   If you want to argue about copyright law, go start a blog about it.  This blog was about how rediculous and false the majority of claims in this movie are and the copyright issue was just more evidence of their lack of hesitation to lie, steal and misrepresent whatever suits them in order to make a point.

In any case as usual you do not seem to be able to debate about the topic directly.  You like to mince words over tangents and try to drag it in completely irrelevant directions.  Which reminds me as to why I wasn't going to post.  But sometimes its just TOO irresistible. :)  And by the way, your usage was technically correct, but I took it upon myself to predict you would say it meant something different than what it reads.  And you did. So [sic] applies. ;)

And no, I have not yet seen the movie (and I will as soon as I can rent it for a laugh -- Ben Stein is a really funny guy!) but its not very hard to find out its contents from people who HAVE seen it (on both sides of this debate) on the 'net.

And by the way Starbucks1,  I am not a Michael Moore fan at all.  While some of what he says is interesting I don't buy his spin on a lot of what he presents.  So don't try to suck me into your Michael Moore silliness please. ;)  I'm also not very far left leaning at all.  Believe it or not, you can be an atheist and still be conservative!!  Isn't that amazing?!  What a profound thought that religion can be separated from politics.

And I truly am done responding here now.  Its bordering on too much effort to be fun anymore and this debate (if you can call it that) is going nowhere.  Besides, the film is really just a symptom of the war on mindshare that the fundies are losing and desperate to regain.  Now THAT would be a fun blog to write just to see the outrageous responses in the comments. :)

scottso, nice to hear you dont buy into Moores spin on everything, and your not extreme left, I dont understand why anyone would be extreme left or right,

Scottso, check out the discussion developing about the article you linked to, about the lizards:

http://www.evcforum.net/cgi...

See post #6 - just as I predicted, the response is priceless...

;-)

Lawsuits are about as common in the movie business as air kisses. We'll see how the court case, if any, comes out. I don't expect a papal bull to be issued either way.

Thanks for coming back, Scottso - one barely-intelligible screed screaming about what a terrible person I am wasn't enough.  

Sorry you're left wondering, oohchild.  I had hoped the cartoon would spark your curiosity.  

It was drawn in the late 70's by an underground cartoonist who was famously sued by Disney for putting characters that resembled Mickey and Minnie into situations that among other things were not  ... ahem... traditionally associated with Disney. He claimed a "fair use" of the copyrighted material, which protects the use of that material in the creation of new artistic efforts, in his case, satire.  For another example of Fair Use, Campbell Soup could not sue Andy Warhol for his famous pop-art piece using repeated images of the Campbell Soup label, and Coca Cola is often (not always) rebuffed when t-shirt makers use variations of the famous Coke scroll for other messages. 

Obviously in the cartoonist's case, for his satire to work, the viewer must recognize who the target of the humor is - SNL's campaign humor would be ineffective if a man were to portray Hillary Clinton, or a white woman were cast as Barack Obama, for example.   So how closely was he entitled to make his characters resemble  Mickey and Minnie?  That question is the point of the rats tail he gave Minnie, and the large hand he drew on Mickey.  He lost his case, probably due to a combination of late 70's backlash against the counter-culture and an extremely large group of highly paid lawyers retained by Disney.  Since that case, copyright law has become less and less hospitable to fair use and the length of copyrights has been repeatedly extended.

Copyright was originally designed to protect the rights of authors - hence its limited protection period, geared to a person's earning years, and to promote ideas by allowing the introducers of them to profit, but in the hands of corporations with unlimited life-spans, it has become an impediment to public discussion and is now devoted only to maximizing their profits for the longest possible time (95 years now, and almost certain to be extended again when necessary.)

This over-long protection period impoverishes us by  reducing our ability to draw from our common cultural language when addressing cultural issues.  And Imagine, nearly 40 years after its writing has certainly become part of our cultural language, through decades of use at candle-lit processions,  anti-war rallies, and similar venues.  This history has given it a context and meanings beyond what it had when it was written, and which the producers of this movie no doubt felt important to their own, separate message.

So, if Yoko insists on a trial, then the producers will defend their use of 25 seconds of this song as "fair use", and I hope they win.  Their chances are improved, I think considering that anyone can listen to 30 seconds of the song at Amazon at no cost at all.

Finally, consider this - if copy right owners had been as in charge of writing copyright laws in 1863 as they are now, the local Mall would be getting sued for dressing people to be a too-close facsimile of this guy, every December... and that wouldn't make us a better place to live.

Hope this clears up my position!  And remember to never ask for a "Kleenex", or a "Brillo Pad"....

Ben Stein is continuing to claim that evolution should have an explanation for gravity. Gravity!?!? Folks, this is ludicrous. I thought someone would have clued him in by now, but I guess the stupid is hard to let go:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wik...

"You can only say Darwinian causes -- random mutation, natural selection -- even gravity is supposed to be done by that! And I would say to these people, well, how did life begin? We don't know, but it had to be by Darwinian means. Well, how did gravity begin? We don't know, but it had to be by Darwinian means."

"...who thought that possibly random selection and mutations didn't account for the universe, didn't account for gravity..."

Wow. Just...wow.

How can anyone take this stuff seriously?

Gosh, you ask me to clarify my opinion on copyright, I spend an hour explaining it, and this is the response I get? Now you're off to gravity?? 

This is a "Jim-level" of interaction - maybe all you can manage?

Stein was attempting to point out that not only must the development of life be explained without recourse to God (using the term "Darwinian means", as shorthand for "without God), so must the existence and precise properties of gravity.

Happily, we have just the right amount of gravity - if the gravitational constant was off by even the smallest amount, scientists tell us, the post-big bang expansion would have either of collapsed back on itself, or expanded with insufficient gathering force to produce the suns, planets, and solar systems we enjoy today.

I've got a funny story about gravity though -

In 1927, Bertand Russell discounted the First Cause argument of God this way:

"If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject."

Stephen Hawking has changed the wording of this story a little, to make the punch line "Its just turtles, all the way down".

So what is your explaination of what gravity is, oohchild?  I suspect that you are willing to accept and use the term "force", as if it explains something. 

It actually explains no more than calling this unknown mechanism "turtles".  And less, I assert, than "angels".

PD, despite your effort to derail this blog into a discussion about copyright laws, I decided to just bring the discussion back to the issue: the blatant attempts of some "Christians" to bring religion into an arena it doesn't belong. Stein is a tool & using a particularly bad straw man in the process. Darwin had nothing to say about gravity. Biological scientists don't have to explain gravity; they have enough to study with the addition of genetics (something completely unheard of in Darwin's day) or the discovery of new & unstudied fossils, just to provide a couple of examples.

The term "Darwinian" has been warped & twisted by the very group that wants to deny it's validity. It's a useless descriptive except for the negative connotation it brings to the minds of Creationists.

I don't begrudge anyone the right to believe in God as the first cause, or who accept evolution as the way God created the diversity of life we see on Earth. Science simply has nothing to say in the matter, one way or the other. It's only when Creationists try to insert their belief into the class room or the laboratory that I speak out.

Stealing & lying to advance a theocratic agenda is so wrong on so many levels, and yet you twist & feint to avoid the issue. You make weak excuses trying justify this piece of propaganda and the lies it presents. You cling to intellectually weak ideas presented in such works as The Privileged Planet instead of understanding the really amazing & wonderful discoveries made every day by scientists.

Telling. Very telling.