"South Park" creators apologize for stealing from website

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/south-park-creators-apologize-lifting-32222

'South Park' Creators Apologize for Lifting Dialogue Off of CollegeHumor Website by Sofia M. Fernandez

Suth Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have apologized to the makers of a CollegeHumor video for using dialogue from the Web short for an episode of the Comedy Central show that ran Wednesday.

The South Park episode "Insheeption" and the CollegeHumor video "Inception Characters Don't Understand Inception," which was posted online in August, both parodied the complex language and theories of the hit film "Inception." The two projects featured the exact same line, "Sometimes my thoughts of my dead wife manifest themselves as trains," as well as other similar wording.

Stone explained the gaff to the New York Times Friday, saying that when he and Parker couldn't get a hold of the actual movie for reference they turned to the Internet and mistakenly thought the dialogue used in the CollegeHumor video were taken directly from the Christopher Nolan picture.

Stone told the Times, "It's just because we do the show in six days, and we're stupid and we just threw it together. But in the end, there are some lines that we had to call and apologize for."

Dan Gurewitch, who penned the CollegeHumor parody with David Young, wrote on his blog Friday that Stone was "extremely nice and apologetic" about the incident, and that there were no hard feelings.

Gurewitch said, "All is well, and we're going to meet with Matt and Trey when they're in New York."

On Sat, 23 Oct 2010 16:00:29 -0400, David wrote:

Translation: "They gave us an awesome financial settlement!"

  -- Rob

It was a brilliant episode, and the scene with Woodsy Owl in the cabin was one of the single funniest moments I have ever seen on South Park.

Now repeat after me:

"Copying is not theft ..."

On Sat, 23 Oct 2010 22:50:01 -0400, The H3CKL3R wrote:

Using someone else's material wthout their permision, on the other hand . . .

Not theft.

Was it uncredited?

Plagiarism is also not theft, though for different reasons.

In none of these instances are you taking something that there's only so much of to go around.

On Mon, 25 Oct 2010 09:11:47 -0400, The H3CKL3R wrote:

Yup, that's why Matt n' Trey were apologizing . . .

Maybe I should've phrased it better; not theft, certainly not right either.

In article , The H3CKL3R wrote:

The 2nd definition of "steal" in my dictionary is "dishonestly pass off (another person's ideas) as one's own." That seems to describe plagiarism.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theft

Theft (n)

1 a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and
       removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful
       owner of it
   b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property
2 (obsolete) : something stolen
3 : a stolen base in baseball

Nothing here about plagiarism; just the physical, unlawful taking of property. Note particularly the element of depriving the rightful owner of it, which copying does not do, nor even plagiarism.

In article , The H3CKL3R wrote:

I didn't say it was in the definition of "theft", it's in "steal". And the first definition of "theft" makes reference to stealing.

The example sentence my dictionary gives is "accusations that one group had stolen ideas from the other were soon flying."

Then you were being irrelevant, since I said "plagiarism is not theft".

It also makes reference to depriving the rightful owner of what's stolen.

In article ,

Barry, you do know who you're dealing with here, right?

Barry Margolin sent the following on 10/27/2010 12:54 AM:

First off, you're replying to Seamus, which is why I didn't see the antecedent in the first place, so bear that in mind.

Secondly, 1b covers plagiarism, as it covers inherent copyright laws. And one thing that Seamus (via whatever 'nym) has always admitted to being willing to violate is copyright law. In fact, if ever I were in doubt about whether a suspicious new name here was yet another incarnation of Seamus, I could probably post something about torrent pirates being unethical thieves and he would out himself in no time by defending the theft. :)

???

He was replying to me. My name isn't Seamus.

1b: an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property

Nothing is "taken" (goes missing) with plagiarism and copyright infringement.

Then you must think Thanatos and others are all Seamus as well, since Thanatos, for one, is aware of the important legal distinction between copyright infringement and theft.

On Mon, 25 Oct 2010 04:57:27 -0700, Antonio E. Gonzalez wrote:

Oh, and awesome little cartoon there . . .