…and this is a 
More lawyer games from creationists
Category: Creationism
Posted on: September 11, 2007 6:00 AM, by PZ Myers
A couple of graduate students have a group called Extant Dodos Productions that uses YouTube to rip into creationist claims. In particular they've used some of Kent Hovind's materials to dissect his arguments. It's a clever idea — they take creationist videos and edit them to insert rebuttals to each argument as they are made.
Apparently, though, Creation Science Evangelism doesn't like the fact that their claims are being popularly weighed, analyzed, and pulverized, and they're now trying to strong-arm Extant Dodos Productions with intimidating letters that say they are infringing on their copyright by using their videos. It seems to me that this work certainly ought to fit under the conventions of fair use, but they have an even stronger case: the videos they used all come with a formal waiver of copyright with the stipulation that the material not be sold.
These videos are intentionally not copyrighted. Please feel free to copy them for free distribution to reach others. We only ask that you observe the following:
1. Do not sell copies for any amount. See 1 Tim. 5:18
2. Consider supporting our ministry financially if you make copies so we can continue to produce new materials.
3. Consider ordering multiple copies from us at discounted rates. (Call our office for details) Our first generation copies will be better quality for testimony sake and will help us continue as well. We have worked hard and spent a large fortune developing this video series. See 1 Tim 5:18
The CSE also has this disclaimer:
Since our beginning in 1989 we have allowed people to copy our videos to spread the gospel faster. Many millions have been made and untold thousands of lives have been changed. We will continue to allow people to copy our videos and distribute them for free but due to several extenuating circumstances we must revoke any permission, assumed or written, for people to sell copies for any price.
And here:
None of the materials produced by Creation Science Evangelism are copyrighted, so feel free to copy those and distribute them freely.
Tsk, tsk. They've plainly given away the right to show these videos, and are now simply objecting to the fact that their ideas are being criticized. Throwing around baseless legal threats seems to be the tactic du jour for certain crackpots, doesn't it?
Politics
Comments
1:00am and then here again at 6:00am. You really don't sleep, do you? :D
Posted by: JCfromNC | September 11, 2007 6:07 AM
I really can't believe there are such a problem in EEUU. It's incredible, i've just seen one of this videos... is hard to believe that exist people fighting for these stupid ideas with no evidence. I know a lot of people that have no idea about how really works evolution, but no one of them thinks it's all product of magic.
I found pharyngula from Dawkins' book "the god delusion". This is a great site. :-)
Posted by: Pedro M | September 11, 2007 6:52 AM
Seems like they got to YouTube
"This video is no longer available due to a copyright cliam by Creation Science Evangelism"
Posted by: Salgod | September 11, 2007 7:03 AM
"This video is no longer available due to a copyright cliam by Creation Science Evangelism"
I can still get it! Great videos.
"Fair use, eh? Then Dawkins won't mind if we do the same with his videos! Thanks for the idea!!!"
Go ahead your innane comments will make Dawkins looke even smarter.
Posted by: sailor | September 11, 2007 7:10 AM
This is supposed to scare Dawkins is it? Good luck with that. I bet he's peeing his pants right now. Go right ahead and show us the goods! Make us weep with your magical insights! Glory!
Whatever, the sun is shining, I'm going out worshiping the great golden disc in the sky!
Posted by: Carl | September 11, 2007 7:11 AM
PZ, I just LOVE how you've been savoring the word "crackpot" recently :-)
Posted by: michael | September 11, 2007 7:15 AM
Hmmm, you think maybe Hovind's group might try to get those graduate students... EXPELLED?
Posted by: The Professor | September 11, 2007 7:16 AM
How many "Tim"s do they know and why do they have to meet one at 5:18 exactly?
Sillines is contagious.
Posted by: fcaccin | September 11, 2007 7:30 AM
I mean "silliness". QED.
Posted by: fcaccin | September 11, 2007 7:32 AM
Hopefully, Dawkins has reserved the rights for copyright.
Posted by: Kevin | September 11, 2007 7:55 AM
See, e.g., The Bush Administration, et. al.
Posted by: S.G.E.W. | September 11, 2007 7:58 AM
Welcome to the blog Pedro M! Enjoy. There are many other great blogs on scienceblogs. Have a browse using the "Blogs in the Network" drop down list on the right (up near the top).
Posted by: Andrew | September 11, 2007 8:11 AM
Based on their own disclaimer aren't they making an illegal copyright claim under the DMCA similar to Uri Geller vs. The Rational Response Squad
How did they spend a fortune to produce these?? the employees were servants of god and they didn't pay taxes on them....sound like a pretty cheap operation to me
Posted by: CleveDan | September 11, 2007 8:12 AM
I see that Robin Collins considers "protron mass" to be one of the universe's precisely balanced, fine-tuned physical constants. What is a "protron"? It's something that a philosopher pretending to be a physicist might write on a blackboard.
Posted by: Zeno | September 11, 2007 8:28 AM
Actually, I didn't sleep this time. I'm teaching a brand new course this term, which means I'm up 'til midnight-1am working on lectures, and I'm up at 5:30. I'm not blogging, then, though -- which is why the post-scheduling feature is kind of handy.
Of course, it's also only the third week of the semester and I'm already feeling exhausted. This is going to be a l o n g year, I can tell.
Andrew, how dare you tell readers to go away! Now I expect you to go to every other blog in the network and tell readers to go read Pharyngula to make up for it.
Posted by: PZ Myers | September 11, 2007 8:32 AM
It's not only ExtantDodo, but a bunch of other YouTube atheists as well. There was a user named RabidApe whose account was suspended just yesterday because he posted bits of a Kent Hovind video. Of course, the creationist videos that use Creation Science Ministry's materials are left untouched despite being guilty of the same copyright violation (assuming they have a legitimate claim, which may not be the case as PZ and others have mentioned).
Posted by: EMR | September 11, 2007 8:34 AM
IANACopyrightL, but it is possible to authorize copying while protecting copyright. The Girl Scouts, for example, authorize copying of much of their material, for free, by Girl Scouts or others engaged in spreading the word. The idea is that they don't want people showing up mocking their stuff, and they want to reserve the right to stop misuse or abuse.
But as you point out, P.Z., it seems they've waived that right, even.
I think it's fair use, clearly, in a scholarly work made generally available through public outlets. If YouTube pulls 'em, if they can be put into formats compatible, maybe a bunch of us bloggers could host the things ourselves.
At an absolute minimum, they could claim parody rights -- remember 2 Live Crew and "Pretty Woman?" It went to the Supreme Court, as I recall. Campbell vs. Acuff-Rose Music http://laws.findlaw.com/us/000/u10426.html
Posted by: Ed Darrell | September 11, 2007 8:40 AM
I have a oouple videos on YouTube, one on who Kent Hovind is and one on his argument that theoldest tree is 4300 years old.
I have not received notice about copyright infringement and I am planning do more.
Posted by: Corey Schlueter | September 11, 2007 9:00 AM
The copyright situation reminds me of a woman wearing a see-through shirt who objects to me looking at her, but not to a younger, richer, better looking man looking at her. IOW, it's free, but not to people we don't like.
Posted by: BaldApe | September 11, 2007 9:08 AM
Excellent!
I think there is a god, therefore I analogize.
I think there is a god, therefore I bullshit.
I think there is a god, therefore I am intellectually dishonest.
How do those people look at themselves in the mirror every day?
Posted by: CalGeorge | September 11, 2007 9:27 AM
PZ- if they need a little pro bono help to respond direct them my way.
Posted by: dhonig | September 11, 2007 9:41 AM
They're all back up, with all the information about not being copyrighted or protected up on the Extant Dodos video page. Woohoo! I don't have it in me right now to watch these all, but bit by bit I'll get around to it. Chock full o'good stuff.
Posted by: Alison | September 11, 2007 10:03 AM
Time for Extant Dodos to drop a line to the EFF. Who then can drop a lawyerly line to YouTube.
YouTube has to walk a very fine line, and I can muster a smidge of sympathy for their position. Most of their "editorial" input is user generated, and the flag stays on until the video can be reviewed by an actual YouTube human, and that takes a while.
Posted by: Graculus | September 11, 2007 10:14 AM
I hate to rain on the parade a bit, here, but...
There's no such thing as "disclaiming copyright." Under the US Copyright Act, works enter the public domain only two ways:
* Expiration of copyright term (also true under the Berne Convention), and
* Works of the US government
Yes, it's a loophole. The Creative Commons license, and similar devices such as the one quoted from the video, are properly "covenants not to sue" (that is, contracts) — not disclaimers of the copyright, but of certain remedies.
Then there's a broader question. The disclaimer quoted relates to the "film" as a whole, not to derivative works made from the film. Thus, we're into "fair use land" — and that's a factual determination for a court to eventually make, and under the law as it stands a court's decision to grant a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order to prevent further distribution of the allegedly infringing version during the trial would probably not be an "abuse of discretion." (Neither would the court's refusal to do so.)
Unfortunately, this is sort of like the ID/evolution argument itself: I'm not trying to explain the way the law should be, or would be if the world conformed to my vision of a Better World, but the way the law is.
Posted by: C.E. Petit | September 11, 2007 10:33 AM
I agree with Ed. Their statement would seem to indicate an intention to abandon ALL their rights under the copyright act, since they make no distinction between the various rights they were granted upon the creation of their work. Unfortunately, there is actually some debate on how exactly to do this and whether it is actually possible. Does this represent a non-binding statement of intent ie:"We have no intention of sueing anyone," or is it an actual, irrevocable grant to the public domain? The law is strangly silent on this. Would heirs, assignees, and creditors be bound by such a statement? It is evident that CSEs current wishes are at odds with previous statements. While their previous statements certainly indemnify Extant Dodo Productions against any damages for what they did, it is somewhat unclear that CSE is legally prevented by their previous statement from pursuing EDP for future infringement. IANAL, YMMV, Free legal advice is overpriced etc.
Posted by: Jim A. | September 11, 2007 10:39 AM
I saw their vid last week. They are outstanding and full lay to waste any arguments made by Hovind or any other fundie. I am not suprised that they would makes this claim though. Fundies hate it when you not only take them to task, but prove everything they say is wrong. Its just not easy being a fundie!
Posted by: firemancarl | September 11, 2007 10:42 AM
Thank's for the advice Andrew.
Of course i'm not going to go away.. :-)
But posts appears too quickly for my poor english
Posted by: Pedro M | September 11, 2007 10:45 AM
I have a couple of videos on YouTube, one on who Kent Hovind is and one on his argument that theoldest tree is 4300 years old.
I have not received notice about copyright infringement but I plan to continue to make more.
This is fair use, is it not?
Posted by: Corey Schlueter | September 11, 2007 10:45 AM
It appears to me that Extant Dodos is doing exactly as CSE requests: Distributing the videos to a wider audience.
I haven't watched any (still at work), but I get the idea that Extant Dodos hasn't cut or altered the videos -- just added commentary.
Kudos to Dodos for their efforts!
-- CV
Posted by: CortxVortx | September 11, 2007 10:46 AM
OH MY SkyDaddy!!!
I could watch those videos all day!!!!!
Awesome.
Posted by: techskeptic | September 11, 2007 11:28 AM
Yes, it's not easy being so comprehensive a liar that the whole of reality is against you. Normal liars only have to deal with little bits of reality (and a few observers of it) being against them at any one time.
Posted by: SEF | September 11, 2007 11:50 AM
Ahh I loved those Kent Hovind videos! I used to show them to all my friends who bought into that whole Evil-ution thing so that they could be good Christians too! But now I can't, because I might get hit with legal action. Darn.
Posted by: Saber | September 11, 2007 11:51 AM
This insane tightrope is just one more huge pieces of evidence that copyright law needs to be completely rewritten.
Posted by: stogoe | September 11, 2007 12:24 PM
As YouTube reconsidered? I can still download and watch ExtantDoDo's YouTube clips disecting Hovind's psuedo-science videos. Or is the restriction limited only to US IP addy's?
Critical Analysis of Kent Hovind's Garden of Eden (click link)
Critical Analysis of Kent Hovind's Age of the Earth (click link)
Posted by: JD | September 11, 2007 12:27 PM
The videos are back even to US IP's (and have been for at least 3 hours).
Speaking of which, I just watched the "Age of the Earth" video and they have at least one real howler:
It's even footnoted, which makes it look like they found this statement in some respectable publication, but it's flamboyantly wrong. It's hard to believe they found any statement like this where they say they did; my guess is that they are paraphrasing something they read but misunderstood.
I'm not a scientist, just an interested layman. Please tell me their biology, cosmology, etc. are better than their historical linguistics.
Posted by: noncarborundum | September 11, 2007 12:43 PM
The videos are back even to US IP's (and have been for at least 3 hours).
Apparently ExtantDodos sent them a counterclaim and youtube reinstated the videos.
See, the machine turns, just not always quickly.
Posted by: Graculus | September 11, 2007 12:48 PM
"Throwing around baseless legal threats," is the heart and soul of the lawyer's adversarial masquerade called litigation. Get the legal ball (balls?) rolling.
Sue the bastards (the Complaint) for calling you a; fill in the blank.
Accuse your husband or wife or neighbor or anybody of something(the Complaint). Great starters are child abuse, sexual abuse, spouse beating, buggering the family dog, saying crackpot, adultery, etc. etc.
Hire a champion lawyer for your cause - YOU MUST OPPOSE THE COMPLAINT!
You ought to know.
There are more than one million lawyers in Supernation and they want access to whatever you have earned or stolen. These yuppie boys and girls produce nothing but paper and agony. Where else will they the bucks for a BMW or a Porsche?
The lawyer's monopoly is ready and waiting to drag us all into their personal playground and play courtroom.
Posted by: gerald spezio | September 11, 2007 12:52 PM
That's funny. If you didn't know them any better, you'd think they really don't want any controversy taught at all ;)
Posted by: Andrés | September 11, 2007 2:14 PM
I wish. Most of us could use the money.
Posted by: Ed Darrell | September 11, 2007 2:48 PM
Is it even possible to 'not copyright' something just by saying so?
Posted by: Olaf | September 11, 2007 5:26 PM
If I were to take an entire movie (say, Star Wars Episode II), insert random comments (say about how much I hate the fact that there's more dialog than fighting) and post it on YouTube, that would not be fair use. Fair use involves taking small bits of things, not the whole thing.
That being said, the explicit non-copyrighting of the videos gives Extant Dodos a slightly better case. Even still, Creation Science Evangelism does reserve some rights (eg. to prevent these videos from being sold for a profit) so these videos aren't completely in the public domain. They also state that, "we have allowed people to copy our videos to spread the gospel faster" which probably means they reserve the right to stop anyone who isn't helping to "spread the gospel faster".
This being the case, legally Extant Dodos is probably in the wrong. The internet being what it is, however, if the entire movie industry doesn't have enough resources to stop copyright infringement, a group of upset creationists probably doesn't either. If these videos are removed from YouTube, I fully expect them to reappear on at least 5 different video sharing sites at least one of which will be based outside the US and thus more or less immune to any legal effort to stop their spread.
Bias acknowledgeable: as the founder of Weluvducsoha (a religion with numerous deities involved) I have a serious incentive to want anything proving there is no intelligent designer in the universe to be banned from all public discussion and preferably have their producers burned at the stake for heresy.
Posted by: Zoel | September 11, 2007 5:27 PM
To C.E. Petit (Comment #24)
I hate to rain on your parade but...
The laws in the United States are subtractive in nature. That means that a law cannot grant you the right to do something, since the Constitution spelled out that you had the right to basically do anything that the federal government (and, retroactively applied, state government) does not expressly forbid.
As such, there is no law stating you cannot put a work into the public domain, nor is there a law that disallows you to revoke your own copyright. There IS a law that establishes the length of copyright (author's life + 70 years), how it is attained (automatically at the moment it enters a public medium), and what copyright that someone else owns prevents you from doing with their works. As a result of this, there is nothing stating that you cannot revoke your rights to copyright.
It is no different than waiving your rights to an attorney when you are arrested. The law states you have the right to an attorney. It does NOT explicitly state you have the right to waive this right, but it is assumed, and it does compel police to cite this fact.
In the end, a judge would easily and reasonably dismiss and judicial action against this group for a variety of reasons,
•first being that they waived their right,
•second being that these works are being critiqued and as such are covered under fair use,
•third being the fact that written statements such as above are considered contracts no different than if you promise someone $100 and they can prove it, you will legally owe them such because it is a verbal contract and the above statement constitutes a contract granting one permission to copy them,
•and finally the fact that you cannot sue a person for copyright infringement if they were acting in good faith that they had the right to do so, which the above statements would surely give one the impression of.
Posted by: sil-chan | September 11, 2007 9:05 PM
I'd also like to point out in response to comment #41 about one of the '10 big' copyright myths. You cannot revoke part of copyright. That is established by international treaty.
Refer to alot of the FOSS community literature on the GPL and like licenses/contracts.
Posted by: sil-chan | September 11, 2007 9:13 PM
That is established by international treaty.
Author's moral rights are established by international treaty too, but the US completely ignores them.
In fact, judging by the precedents set recently, the US doesn't believe that there is any law outside of its own, which applies world wide.
Posted by: Graculus | September 11, 2007 11:26 PM
I don't know if it'd hold up in court, but you can see it clearly stated on their site (Google cache) that their "materials" are not copyrighted. Whether or not it would hold up in court (xians tend to have expensive lawyers) they have clearly given away their copyright. Unless the works were produced in a country where it is not legal to disown your copyright (such as Germany iirc) then this stuff is public domain.
It's hardly the fault of any of us that they're too stupid to understand basic copyright law in addition to basic anything else.
Someone has obviously tipped them off to it though, because they appear to have scrubbed it from their site. Now one of them will probably read this and sue Google to take down the cache.
Posted by: Timothy | September 11, 2007 11:48 PM
Well the problem is that what they stated is, strictly speaking, impossible. You can't "not copyright" material, rather you are automaticly granted copyright upon creation. (fixation actually, but that's a distinction without a difference here) Clearly, their statement is at a minimum a non-exclusive license to exercise any of the exclusive rights granted by copyright subject to the condition that you not charge people money for any copies that you've made. Now I disagree with those that say that granting material to the public domain. Although there is no method in statute to do this, as a legal and a public policy matter I believe that is an absurd result. A CCL clearly does NOT grant material to the public domain because of the explicit conditions contained therin. CSIs condition to not sell copies is either sufficient indication that they intend to license their copyrights under the condition that no charge is made for the material, a condition that EDP seems to be complying with; or it is merely a desire that they have stated. If you give somebody a book and say "please give it to somebody else when you're done with it," you can't claim breach of contract if they keep it or sell it.
Posted by: Jim A. | September 12, 2007 10:30 AM
As a photographer I am aware of third way to lose copyright (to the two stated above).
For some reason (unless the recent Disney driven extention/grab made changes) photographs aren't treated the same as other creative works.
If someone steals an image of mine, and publishes it, without attribution and I don't challenge that; I lose my copyright.
I now have one year to so challenge (it used to be a lot shortter, but that was changed sometime in the '90s, IIRC). I've not seen any case law on internet publishing, but I suspect it will be treated the same, though oddly the quirks of the internet do give the photographer some greater protections (since someone who takes an image of mine and presents it as his own isn't just violating my copyright, but asserting a false claim of it his own copyright to the work, which is a different thing); as the default for someone posting something to their blog/etc. is that the are the creator of the work.
Posted by: Terry Karney | September 12, 2007 11:31 AM
As a photographer I am aware of third way to lose copyright (to the two stated above).
For some reason (unless the recent Disney driven extention/grab made changes) photographs aren't treated the same as other creative works.
If someone steals an image of mine, and publishes it, without attribution and I don't challenge that; I lose my copyright.
I now have one year to so challenge (it used to be a lot shortter, but that was changed sometime in the '90s, IIRC). I've not seen any case law, on point, in regards to internet publishing but I suspect it will be treated the same, though oddly the quirks of the internet do give the photographer some greater protections (since someone who takes an image of mine and presents it as his own isn't just violating my copyright, but asserting a false claim of it his own copyright to the work, which is a different thing); as the default for someone posting something to their blog/etc. is that the are the creator of the work.
Posted by: Terry Karney | September 12, 2007 11:33 AM
The CSE sweep of YouTube continues. They banned Rational Response:
http://www.rationalresponders.com/
Posted by: HCN | September 14, 2007 12:05 PM
How are you supposed to notice they've done it?! The available publication outlets (newspaper, magazine, book, TV, internet, flyer, poster etc) are far too numerous to check. It's a good start but hardly sufficient to check anything published by a creationist - since they seem to be quite reliably amoral / immoral.
Posted by: SEF | September 14, 2007 1:40 PM
Hey, PZ, better go grab a Google cache of Hovind's original "we don't copyright" statement -- the bastards are trying to revise it: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/09/14/kent-hovind-creationist-liar-and-evil-evil-evil/
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | September 17, 2007 11:54 AM
If people know on which page (ie its URL) they saw the original "not copyright" assertion, then there's the WayBackMachine to use for evidence collection. That Internet Archive doesn't store every page from everywhere but is a site which typically has a longer duration of old page persistence than Google's cache, if it has the page at all.
http://www.archive.org/index.php
Posted by: SEF | September 17, 2007 12:31 PM
no need to grab online copies (although it's not harmful) -- it's on their CDs and other materials. we got copies of them at a talk at berkeley a couple of years back, and the copyright waiver is on all those materials.
Posted by: laura quilter | September 17, 2007 12:49 PM
It seems to me that Ken Hovind is now taking lessons from none other than the Church of Scientology in the use of "DMCA SLAPPs" to shut down criticism.
For those not familiar with that tactic (and why I bring up Scientologists), the Church of Scientology very aggressively attempted to shut down all posting of the "Fishman affidavit" on the Internet throughout the 90s, including their lawyers sending legal requests worldwide--and a number of attempted lawsuits against Internet service providers--asking that anyone posting the Fishman affidavit have their accounts removed and the offending material removed from the Internet.
Interestingly, the reason Scientology wanted all traces of the Fishman affidavit off the net was because it contained copies of the "super secret scriptures" of Scientology, including pretty much all Scientology "scripture" from OT I through OT VII (including the infamous sections where it is detailed that all problems of humans are due to "body thetans"--space ghosts resulting from Evil Galactic Overlord Xenu having nuked billions of aliens in Mt. Kilahuea and Las Palmas volcanos 73 million years ago. No matter that neither volcano even existed 73 million years ago--they're geologically too young for that).
Scientology claims that these are copyrighted texts (and in fact also claim they are trade secrets to boot; no matter that the two categories are technically incompatible as trade secrets are NOT published to the general public, whilst copyrighted works are but reproduction is prohibited); the reason the info is out at all is because the "super secret scriptures" were included as evidence in a court proceeding by an ex-Scientologist (the eponymous Fishman) who was suing Scientology for damages, and the Super Secret Scriptures ended up as part of open court records available to the public at large.
During the 90s, Scientology filed numerous DMCA-type requests to ISPs; this ended up in people posting the material to Usenet (where lawyers working for the Church of Scientology tried to forge cancels as spam), lawsuits against a few ISPs (including xs4all.nl, who won against Scientology when the latter tried to force them to take down Karen Spaink's archive of the Super secret Scriptures), the shutdown-by-lawsuit of the major anonymous remailer network on the Internet at the time (which was being used to post the Super Secret Scriptures to Usenet via email-to-Usenet gateways; the maintainer of anon.penet.fi shut down rather than risk Scientology forcing him to turn over a complete list of users), and even a hostile takeover of an exit counseling group known for its work against Scientology (the Cult Awareness Network were literally sued into bankruptcy and then had their assets bought by the Scientologists).
Posted by: Dogemperor | September 17, 2007 9:24 PM