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Semantics, this is plagiarism not piracy. Both of which are copyright infringement.

Also Michael is incorrect in saying 'Most slides I could decipher are direct copies from slides'. They've been reformatted, unlike the screenshots from the movie in his article.

While the op is not crying foul, there is a small degree of irony.

This is nothing more than an interesting find on creative content generation/inspiration.

I think it's you who are confusing the semantic relationship between the two (three?) concepts.

Plagiarism is not a legal term; it refers to using someone else's intellectual work (which may or may not be under copyright), without credit, in a way that violates the cultural standards of an academic (or other) community.

Plagiarism may or may not be copyright infringement -- even if the materials plagiarized are under copyright, it may be fair use. Or in some cases you can plagiarize by stealing someone's ideas but not their text or other fixed expression (ideas are, in general, not protected by copyright; but stealing someone's ideas without attribution is still plagiarism in an academic context).

But the defenses against an accusation of copyright infringement, like fair use , do not serve as defenses against an accusation of plagiarism in an academic community. Plagiarism in and of itself is not illegal, there is no law against plagiarism. (Unless maybe in extreme cases it could be fraud?). Still, plagiarism may get you kicked out of school or denied tenure, or generally cause you to lose respect and trust. But some instances of plagiarism may, of course, also be illegal copyright infringement.

Copyright infringement is, of course, a legal term.

"Piracy", to me, in this context, is simply another term for copyright infringement. Isn't that how the large content owners use it? If it's copyright infringement, it's piracy.

Of course, whether an individual instance is copyright infringement or not, is decided for certain only in court. But there are cases reasonably educated observers would predict with high confidence as being determined (or not) to be copyright infringement; and others that might be considered a strong-but-not-certain case, etc.

Something can be both plagiarism and copyright infringement, or only one (either one), or neither. They are entirely separate.

In this case, I think it's likely fair use, and also perhaps not likely to be considered plagiarism (rather, isn't it documentary realism?). But the reason people get so excited to call it copyright infringement -- is because the movie studios get so excited to call copyright infringement uses of _their_ IP that reasonable people think ought to be obviously fair use too. "And since the producers of the movie consider it fair use to copy 14 of my slides without giving me credit, it must also be fair use to quote the scene of the movie here" The irony is entirely intended by the author of the OP.

I don't believe I claimed Plagiarism is a legal term, nor is piracy in my view. I said there is a semantic difference and they both are effectively Copyright infringement - which is a legal term.

Depending on your world view and what you do; you can plagiarize and infringe, you can pirate and not break a law. This synopses should help muddle things up nicely https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130925/09523724654/diffe...

I do not feel that 'Documentary Realism' gives the film makers a right to lift the text from the original slides verbatim without attribution. Fair use though, I can agree with you.

It is simply not true that "Plaguirism is effectively copyright infringement." As I tried but failed to explain!

I am not sure what definition of 'piracy' you are using where it's not simply a synonym for 'copyright infringement', but I'm not really sure it matters.

For better or for worse, your "world view" is pretty irrelevant in determining whether you infringed copyright or not.

I disagree; the use of the stills from the movie to make his point is fair use. http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
I didn't say usage of stills wasn't fair use, you are correct. My point was the op claimed the film directly copied his stills, they do not appear to have done so.
Fair use is a defense for infringement, it doesn't mean that infringement didn't happen. It more like a get-out-of-jail-free sort of thing--you did the deed, but you don't do the time.
Right to quote.
Quoting requires attribution.

My question is under what license (if any) the deck was released. Depending on that, even attribution may not have been required...

EDIT: The CCC wiki mentions material being released under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA, but from context that appears to be referring to recordings of the lectures.

If I do a fictional movie about Martin Luther King, and quote part of his "I Have A Dream" speech, citation is assumed.
Interesting example, as MLK's estate in fact will try to make you pay licensing fees to do this, claiming they own the copyright and recognizing few instances of 'fair use'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream#Copyright_disput...

And attribution actually has little to do with copyright infringement (in the U.S. anyway). It is important not to confuse the legal concept of copyright from the social/academic concept of plaguirism, they are different things. Whether you have a fair use to quote MLK's speech without permission from the King estate is something you'd have to take up in court -- but whether you properly attributed it or not is not really of significant relevance in determining whether it was copyright infringement or not. (In the U.S. anyway)

(An interesting exception might be CC-BY licensed things -- which offer anyone interested an automatic license to use a copyrighted work without fee, but only if the user attributes properly. But the attribution is a term of the license, not a part of copyright law in general.)

Ditto for Winston Churchill's estate: http://freakonomics.com/2013/01/17/who-owns-the-words-that-c...

(Although the linked piece suggests that the Churchill situation is at least somewhat specific to British law.)

Interestingly enough the IP of MLK's speech is vigorously enforced.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-you-wont-see-or-h...

Reminds me of how Game Freak used a map created by the people over at Serebii.net in their most recent Pokemon game. But they reacted in a different way: they were ecstatic.

http://www.serebiiforums.com/showthread.php?637946-Serebii-n...

Note - both ways got them attention and page-views.

Are the NPCs in that room Pokémon fanatics who reverse-engineer every single stat? That would be perfect.
The slides being copied is just moot compared to characters and situations being falsely portrayed on this film.

An xbox hacker is angry at Assange for fucking with his pin stacked presentation. What a nerd! And look at the envious looks from the other guy to his girl friend just because she is paying attention to the always narcissistic, egomaniac and asshole Julian Assange. If you can't hate him for being an asshole, hate him for being an asshole to hackers.

What's worst is parts of your work (inspired, copied, whatever) and persona appearing on this joke. I perfectly understand the motivation behind the article, I would be mad too.

I would feel just the tiniest bit insulted had it happened to me.

They could at least have put his name in the credit instead of "Xbox guy". I remember watching that talk and I found it really interesting.

>> And since the producers of the movie consider it fair use to copy 14 of my slides without giving me credit [...]

These are not copies. I think the use is actually legit.

The slides in the film appear to based on his slides, but there are sufficiently modified from the original to be a completely separate work IMHO.

Your humble opinion would be wrong. This is pretty clearly a "derivative work", which requires permission from the rightsholder.

For example, I could totally write a story that had characters named Gandalf and Frodo. But if my Gandalf happened to be a grey-wearing wizard, who walked around saying things like, "A wizard is never late. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to," and my Frodo a hairy-footed fellow of diminutive stature with an extra-special ring, I'd better have had permission from the Tolkien estate, or a lot of money to burn on lawyers and fines.

EDIT: Pre-emptively, yeah yeah yeah, parody. Bringing that up in this context is probably diversionary pedantry at best, however.

Bad example. The items in the movie are mostly paraphrases or summaries of the original. This would be more like releasing a movie where in one of the scenes a wall in the background contained a slide that said:

  WIZARDS
  - NEVER LATE OR EARLY
  - PRECISELY ON TIME
Does that require the Tolkien estate to grant permission?
The other factor is that they're background slides.

The Tolkien Trust would be very interested in stopping you from selling a derivative version of Christopher Tolkien's maps but rather less interested if derivative version of Tolkien's maps appear as props in a movie scene involving a convention for fantasy enthusiasts in a movie whose theme and plotline is not even remotely related to the subject of hobbits or Middle Earth.

That's not how fair use works. The only way to determine whether something qualifies as "fair use" is to take the case to court and have a court rule on it.
I'm pretty sure that the documentary aspect of the movie makes the thing fair use.
"documentary"? The Fifth Estate is not a documentary.
This is not copyright infringement. The original "work" is much to small and fact based to be enforceable copyrightable material and the visual style is a default theme. This is inspiration and a bit of copying but certainly not breaking federal law.
Maybe this is a clever way of breaking the fourth wall to teach you just how Wikileaks really works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall

They said it was "based on real events", didn't they?
That doesn't remotely obviate the requirement to obtain permission from, and give attribution to, the rightsholders of material used in the film.

With Hollywood's insistence — being premised, even — on copyrights, there's something of a "live by the sword, die by the sword" standard to which they should be held.

I could do an unauthorized documentary about JK Rowling without her permission, and I could show the Harry Potter book covers in that movie without getting her permission.

Nixon sure didn't approve all the movies that got made about him.

Nixon's approval doesn't matter, copyright on images and video of him belongs to the people who recorded them.

And yes, Harry Potter covers would likely be fair use in the context of a documentary about JK Rowling where it's obvious that they're someone else's work being used for informational purposes. Taking slides from someone's powerpoint and putting them on a bulletin board is more like cutting pieces out of the covers and using them as owl clipart with no attribution and in an unrelated context.

Pastiche, palimpsest, and bricolage are all valid expressive forms which excerpt or rewrite liberally from source material. And this is a closely-related context – a fictional retelling of the same day the slides appeared! – commenting (via fiction) on major social and political issues. There's a strong fair use rationale here, too.
I would be interested in an actual copyright lawyer's take on this.

The use here, especially lightly rewritten as it was, seems de minimis, justifiable in setting a scene derived from real events, and with no harm to the original author's reputation or livelihood. Maybe under other countries' law, a stricter permission regime applies, but for the US, it looks like a slam-dunk on fair-use grounds to me.

I also prefer the spirit of the Noisebridge reply to Dreamworks [1] – roughly, "you should be embarrassed for even thinking you need to ask" – to copyright-maximalist freeze-frame nit-picking.

[1] https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/DreamworksReply

I don't see anywhere to make a purchase for the slides.