John Lennon's sons and widow, Yoko Ono, are suing the filmmakers of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" for using the song "Imagine" in the documentary without permission.Last I saw Ben Stein, he was on 700 Club hawking his latest investment strategy book. Pat obviously hadn't read the book, but he was full of typical gee-shucks optimism about it. Seemingly annoyed, Ben kept cutting through Pat's stammering. Ben looked very, very tired.
[...]
The documentary, which features Ben Stein, an actor, comedian and former speechwriter for President Richard Nixon, looks at alleged discrimination against scientists and teachers who support so-called intelligent design as an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution.
(Article link via Pharyngula, whose comments board to this particular post is unfortunately full of nasty comments about Asian women.)
Update: Haha. In this comment Pharyngula commenter Curt Cameron links to a YouTube page he claims to contain the clip from the documentary which features the song Imagine in context, but the clip has been taken down. According to the YouTube page:
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Premise MediaPremise Media Corporation produced the film EXPELLED. So they're enforcing their copyright to a clip posted on YouTube which contains an unauthorized segment of "Imagine" while at the same time arguing in civil court that their unauthorized use of "Imagine" falls under the domain of fair use. From the Reuters article:
The producers cited the fair use doctrine, which allows the use of copyrighted materials for the purposes of commentary and criticism.Demonstrating once again that consistency is the hobgoblin of Designer Intelligence.
"We are disappointed therefore that Yoko Ono and others have decided to challenge our free speech right to comment on the song 'Imagine' in our documentary film," they said in a statement.
Labels: atheism
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