Yoko Ono Sues “Expelled” Filmmakers

An update to the news earlier reported in a post about Yoko Ono exploring possible legal actions against a creationist documentary:

John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, and his sons are suing the filmmakers of “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” for using the song “Imagine” in the documentary without permission.

[...]

Yoko Ono, son, Sean Ono Lennon, and Julian Lennon, John Lennon’s son from his first marriage, along with privately held publisher EMI Blackwood Music Inc filed suit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan seeking to bar the filmmakers and their distributors from continuing to use “Imagine” in the movie.

They are also seeking unspecified damages.

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.

Dakk

Good, the entire propaganda film was made off of lies and tricking people into interviews. They should be ashamed, they’ve done more harm to “intelligent” design, than help.
Montsan

Part of me is unhappy in that this will only give the movie more publicity than it actually deserves while the other part of me is hopeful that this will actually attract enough followers of the religion of logic to help disprove the movie’s arguments and grind it into the dirt.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-religion, I just find the idea of teaching creationism as science rather repugnant.

shazzb0t

Agreed.

Level3

Hope she bankrupts them.

This is the religious-right version of a Michael Moore documentary. The only people buying tickets are people who are told to go by their priests every Sunday.

“Because God did it” is not science. If it were, then we could all get perfect scores on any Physics or Biology test by just writing “because God did it”

I really hope she bankrupts them becuase we all know thier next step is going to be to try to push it into the classrooms just like the Al Gore mockumentary “An Inconvenient Truth [mixed with convenient fibs]” has been.
Lei

setting the movie aside , Yoko really wants more money does she? Well I understand that she has every right to take legal action but she should just let some things pass rather than hog more money for herself

shazzb0t

Hmm, I don’t think this is just about money. It is more or less about the idea of Lennon’s song being used without any consent from his family members or the publishers. This kind of action is pretty routine for copyright infringment.

If they used his song without consent then they had this coming to them.
hadji

Considering one of the key lines was “imagine there is no religion” being used by conservative Christians to smear evolution in favour of “intelligent design” maybe it has something to do with what her and John believe in.

Maybe she just has a problem with propaganda.

Chris

um . . . Ben Stein is Jewish. Hello.

Rob

Not defending a copyright you own is tantamount to surrendering the work to public domain. Whether or not it’s for the money, she should be on top of this because that’s the way copyright law works right now.
the overthinker

The problem with copyright law is that it doesn’t always work like this. It is possible, assuming someone lets someone else use their copyright innocently, that someone else will use it not so innocently, and then when the copyright holder sues, the other side’s lawyers can argue precedent for failing to guard copyright.

TenSigh

How sad. Yoko needs publicity, so she sues someone else for their freedom of expression. Pretty ironic, really.

And to the comments that lambast this film for not being “scientific”, one has to ask, how scientific is it to assume that single celled organisms just “appeared”? Have you seen the film? One Darwinist claims “aliens” landed on Earth and planted the seeds that created life. Believing in God is whacky but THAT isn’t?

the overthinker

You are an idiot. You have not got the slightest idea what you are talking about. And it shows.
Eryn

It’s not “freedom of expression” when the copyright in question is being used in a product that is meant to be sold for a profit (and for the sake of propaganda). Not only does that imply that the song helps the filmmakers make money without their having bothered to ask anyone’s permission to use it that way, it implies that the song is going to be used to promote a message that neither John nor Yoko thinks it was intended to promote.

The point of science is to NOT ASSUME ANYTHING! If you don’t know how something happened, you say, “I don’t know, but I will do my best to find out someday using the science available.” You do NOT say, “Well, I can’t explain this right now, therefore God must be responsible.” That’s assuming too much, my good sir.

As for the alien thing, that is the result of some serious misunderstanding and misleading edits/narration on the part of Expelled. To paraphrase Richard Dawkins’s blog, he was asked in the interview to give a scenario in which intelligent design might have occurred. He was NOT asked if he actually believed in the scenario he gave, just asked to put one forward for the sake of argument. He put forward a science fiction scenario as a way of sticking to the fact that many intelligent design supporters actually do say “Oh, we’re not advocating religion. For all we know, the designer could be an alien race!” And even then, he pointed out in his example that even if aliens did plant life on earth, then who created the aliens? In this way, he pointed out the holes in the scenario he had just put forward as a way of demonstrating how ludicrous he believes ID to be in general.

Yoko Ono Sues “Expelled” Filmmakers

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