Shia LaBeouf’s Weird Plagiarism Case

On December 17, 2014 Shia LaBeouf released his short film Howard Cantour.com. It did not take long for sharp eyes to detect the uncanny resemblance to a comic strip by famous creator Daniel Clowes.

LaBeouf took to Twitter to apologize for the mishap. Funny enough, even his mea culpa tweet seems to be plagiarized!

LaBeouf obviously does not know how to apologize. His tweet “[getting] lost in the creative process” doesn’t justify ripping off Daniel Clowes, especially considering the amount of time and work Clowes put into it.

LeBeouf also answered numerous questions about the origins of the short movie without pointing out that he adapted it from the comic strip,

Funny enough, even his apology about his plagiarism seems to be plagiarized! Andrew Hake noticed on Twitter that LaBeouf has already been caught once before in plagiarizing an apology. It seems that LaBeouf prefers trolling the Internet to find "his" apology instead of writing it himself.

According to Andrew S. Allen “We were led to believe by Shia and the filmmaking team that the story and script for HowardCantour.com was completely original,. There is a global outcry about the uncredited use of Daniel Clowes’ work. That didn’t come until it hit online. If it wasn’t for the legions of online Clowes fans, this may never have come to light.

As curators of a powerful but under-appreciated medium like short film where filmmakers spend years of work to make little or no money, the recognition you get from your work, and therefore attribution, is often all you have, so we take it seriously. Until Clowes grants permission and is credited in the work, we’ve pulled the film offline.”

Meanwhile on Twitter, users came together with the tongue-in-cheek hashtag #shialaboeuffilms to offer some suggestions for future projects LaBoeuf could create that would also be “inspired by someone else’s idea”:

Shia LaBeouf tried to close the unpleasant incident by stating that his behavior, tweets, plagiarism and public apologies were all part of his "performance art" for a project called #stopcreating. Guess what? He got the idea from Joaquin Phoenix.

Curious minds want to know - was that LaBoeuf's final act of plagiarism?

Federal Judge Dismisses Twitter Stalking Case

Federal judge Rodger W. Titus recently dismissed a case against a man accused of stalking a religious leader on Twitter. In his 27-page ruling he stated that his speech, though "uncomfortable," is protected by the Constitution.

Buddhist leader Alyce Zeoli accused William Lawrence Cassidy of harassing her and inflicting "substantial emotional distress". Cassidy was involved with Zeoli and her sect until they had a falling out. In 2010, Cassidy started posting hundreds of harassing messages directed at Zeoli via Twitter and a blog hosted on Blogspot.

The tweets consisted of statements such as: "Do the world a favor and go kill yourself. P.S. Have a nice day." According to Zeoli, the tweets not only inflicted "substantial emotional distress", but also madder her fear for her safety. She claimed that she hadn't left her house for 18 months, except to visit her psychiatrist.

Judge Rodger W. Titus ruled in Cassidy's favor, opining that Twitter is different from other communication mediums like phone calls or emails because a person can ignore items posted on Twitter. In his 27-page ruling, he compared Twitter to the bulletin boards colonial-era citizens used to erect in their front yards. The difference is that Twitter exists online, he said.

"If one colonist wants to see what is on another's bulletin board, he would need to walk over to his neighbor's yard and look at what is posted… Now one can inspect a neighbor's blog by simply turning on a computer," Titus ruled, stating that one colonist can choose to look at a board or ignore it completely.

He continued: "Twitter and blogs are today's equivalent of a bulletin board that one is free to disregard, in contrast, for example, to e-mails or phone calls directed to a victim." Because Zeoli had this option, Cassidy's speech is protected.

The judge also ruled that because some of Cassidy's messages were critical of Zeoli's religious beliefs, his speech is protected by the First Amendment.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation applauded Titus's decision.

"Speech on social networking sites–as with speech anywhere–has the potential to inform and enlighten as well as to outrage," senior staff attorney Matt Zimmerman said. "It is imperative that courts recognize and uphold First Amendment protections in order to give all manner of expression sufficient breathing space to thrive online."

It's unclear whether Zeoli will appeal.

Good news for bloggers

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that simply making an online link to defamatory content created by someone else does not constitute publishing that content. This ruling means that bloggers and Twitter users are not breaking the law by merely linking to another site that contains libelous or defamatory material. It thus upheld the rulings of the B.C. Supreme Court and the B.C. Court of Appeal.

“The Internet, in short, cannot provide access to information without hyperlinks,” wrote Justice Rosalie Abella. “Limiting their usefulness by subjecting them to the traditional publication rule would have the effect of seriously restricting the flow of information and as a result, freedom of expression.”

The decision was unanimous. However, two justices warned that framing or endorsing the link as the truth or accurate could still be illegal.

“Combined text and hyperlink may amount to publication of defamatory material,” wrote Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin and Justice Morris Fish. “If the text communicates agreement with the content linked to, then the hyperlinker should be liable for the defamatory content.”

Civil Liberties organizations, Internet advocates and media lawyers all agree that outlawing linking would stem the pace of information online.

(Image courtesy of www.editorsweblog.org)

Judge Rejects Twitter’s Attempt To Move Patent Lawsuit To Californian Court

Internet companies such as Twitter, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Facebook are hit with patent suits regularly, often in inconvenient venues. They would therefore want those lawsuits to be heard in the relatively tech-friendly courthouses of Northern California.

However, it looks like that is not going to happen anytime soon. Twitter raised a novel argument. It asked to move the most recent patent lawsuit against it to move from Virginia to San Francisco. Titter claimed that the plaintiff in this case, Dinesh Agarwal, is a Twitter user himself. He therefore agreed to Twitter’s terms of service. Those terms include a clause that states that all lawsuits must be brought against the Company in San Francisco.

US District Judge Henry Morgan however ruled against Twitter. He concluded that his own court in Alexandria (VA) is the appropriate place to hear the lawsuit. He stated that Twitter’s contract clause referring o where lawsuits must be heard, does not necessarily apply to patent suits.

The judge also did not want to create a precedent. Allowing Twitter to transfer its court case would enable other social networking companies to start similar disputes. This would potentially foster satellite litigation in every patent case involving a social networking market participant.

Twitter move was smart. If the judge had accepted its argument, companies such as Twitter or Facebook would be in a strong position to move their patent disputes to their “home court.”

In this case, Mr. Agarwal is suing in the district he has been living in for the last 25 years. He is therefore not seeking a location foreign to both parties (like East Texas). Interesting enough, Agarwal’s twitter account shows that he has zero tweets. His profile states that he is a patent lawyer as well as an aspiring screenwriter. Agarwal signed up for Twitter in January 2010 mainly for the purpose of determining whether the service infringes his patent. Later that year, he founded VS Technologies, a shell company that hold the disputed patent and he then pursued lawsuit against Twitter.

Agarwal’s patent is based on a “method and system for creating an interactive virtual community of famous people”. As a patent lawyer, Agarwal handled all the paperwork for this patent application himself. He used patents to demand royalty payments from the tech industry. This increasingly common situation is called “patent trolling”

Federal court records show that Twitter has been sued for patent infringement at least four times. In addition to this lawsuit brought by VS Technologies, Twitter is facing an ongoing patent lawsuit filed by Cooper Notification in 2009.

Twitter settled a patent lawsuit brought by TechRadium in 2009. A fourth lawsuit, filed in 2010 by lawyer-controlled patent-holding company Stragent LLC, the lawsuit was dropped without explanation.

Federal Lawsuit between Cybermoguls over Control of OMGFacts Twitter Account


Twitter is Serious Business – just ask Cybermoguls 17-year-old Adorian Deck and by 24-year-old Emerson Spartz.

In 2009, Deck started the Twitter account OMGFacts where he tweeted trivial facts. He gained 300,000 followers within one year. Last year, Spartz approached Deck for a business partnership.

Spartz is the owner of Spartzinc, a network of websites that receives over 6 million unique monthly visitors and has more than 3 million followers on Facebook and Twitter. His portfolio include Mugglenet, one of the most popular Harry Potter fansites, the Twitter account Givesmehope and the high school dating site Flirtlocker.

Deck and Spartz signed a contract that gave Spartz all the rights to the OMGFacts brand and content. Spartz was able to gain over 1.8 million followers for OMGFacts. He also launched an OMWFacts website and YouTube account.

Up till now, Deck only made $100 on the deal. He is striking back at Spartz with a lawsuit, stating that the contract is "predatory" solely aimed to get full control of the account. Deck’s attorney, Glenn Peter, claims that the contract was a ploy to dupe Deck into transferring his rights to the OMGFacts trademark without realizing what he was doing.

Under California law, individuals can disavow any contracts signed when they were minors. But Spartz counters that Deck’s mother co-signed the contract as his legal guardian, and that Deck is trying to exploit SpartzInc for financial gain.

“Among other things, this agreement was designed to protect against Mr. Deck walking away with what we created, which is exactly what he’s trying to do,” Spartz said.

The OMGFacts lawsuit also addresses the question of who legally owns a tweet. How does copyright apply to a tweet?

According to Eric Goldman, a professor of Internet and intellectual property law at Santa Clara Law School: “Because tweets are so short, it can be hard to compose them in a way that earns them full copyright protection. Copyright protects the ways in which we express ourselves; it doesn’t protect the underlying facts or ideas we are expressing.”

To complicate copyright matters even more, Twitter includes a button to “retweet” or repost another user’s tweet, which implies a right to reuse someone else’s material. Collection of tweets or brand identities are also in legal limbo.

Top tweeters/brands like Kim Kardashian (7.4 million followers) can command $10,000 per tweet to endorse a product, and when rapper 50 Cent (4.5 million followers) posted praise of a penny stock in which he was an investor in January 2011, shares of H & H Imports Inc. skyrocketed.

The law is trying to catch up. But as Goldman pointed out: “We’ve had 600 years to develop the rules on books; we’ve had less than five years to develop how those rules apply to tweets.”

Tweeting in the courtroom? Yes we can!

The Lord Chief Justice in the UK allows journalists to report some court proceedings by using Twitter, texting and email. He made it clear though that it would not happen if it could influence witnesses.

Media organizations and journalists can now apply for permission to use social media on a case-by-case basis. Non-journalists could still be barred in order to ensure the "proper administration of justice". This would prevent distractions in court and limit the potential for interference with courts' own recording equipment. The guidance applies only to courts in England and Wales.
For now, anyone who wants to tweet in court needs to get the judge’s permission. In criminal trials tweeting will quite likely be forbidden when there is a risk that witnesses who are out of court would be able to find out what is happening inside.

The Lord Chief Justice explained: "The judge has an overriding responsibility to ensure that proceedings are conducted consistently with the proper administration of justice, and so as to avoid any improper interference with its processes. There is no statutory prohibition on the use of live text-based communications in open court. But before such use is permitted, the court must be satisfied that its use does not pose a danger of interference to the proper administration of justice in the individual case. Subject to this consideration, the use of an unobtrusive, handheld, virtually silent piece of modern equipment for the purposes of simultaneous reporting of proceedings to the outside world as they unfold in court is generally unlikely to interfere with the proper administration of justice."

Interesting enough, the Twitter guidance comes days after WikiLeaks Assange's court hearing. Mr Justice Ouseley ruled during that hearing that supporters and journalists should tweet about was happening in real time. At an earlier bail hearing, district judge Howard Riddle did allow tweeting from Westminster Magistrates Court, saying journalists could send messages if they were discreet and did not interfere with the judicial process.

If the same policy would apply to let video cameras in court, justice would be seen on TV, online and on mobiles. Is this the way to go?

On the other side of the Pond, U.S. District Judge Thomas J. Marten allowed in 2009 a reporter to Twitter court proceedings in a trial of six Crips gang defendants taking place in his Wichita, Kansas courtroom.

"The more we can do to open the process to the public, the greater the public understanding," the judge said when asked about lawyers' concerns that jurors might be influenced by the tweets.

So where will it end? Does tweeting serve a purpose in court room?

To quote Andrew Cohen: “The difference between a reporter tweeting in the courtroom and a reporter doing the same during the breaks and phoning it in is not that great."

Ita Est

(Image courtesy of MorganPR)