The EFF sues Uri Geller
p2pnet.net OT news:- Israeli spoon-bender Uri Geller is in the EFF‘s bad books.
Geller, who’s supposedly able to bend spoons by merely thinking at them, is being sued by the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) on behalf of a YouTube critic, “silenced by Geller’s baseless copyright claims”.
Brian Sapient belongs to the Rational Response Squad, dedicated to debunking what it calls irrational beliefs.
“As part of their mission, Sapient and others post videos to YouTube that they say demonstrate this irrationality,” says the EFF. “One of the videos that Sapient uploaded came from a NOVA program called ‘Secrets of the Psychics,’ which challenges the performance techniques of Geller.
“Despite the fact that only three seconds of the over thirteen-minute video contain footage allegedly under copyright owned by Geller’s corporation Explorogist Ltd. – a classic fair use of the material for criticism purposes – Geller filed a takedown demand with YouTube under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). That violates the DMCA requirement that copyright holders only send takedown notices for infringing content.”
Sapient’s YouTube account was suspended, shutting down his videos were not available for more than two weeks.
Now the EFF is asking for damages and a declaratory judgment that the NOVA video doesn’t infringe Geller’s copyrights, and that he be, “restrained from bringing any further legal action against Sapient in connection to the clip”.
Also See:
EFF – Spoon-Bending ‘Paranormalist’ Illegally Twists Copyright Law, May 9, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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May 9th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
I met Geller once. He is rather full of himself but an otherwise OK guy from what I could tell. Seems strange he would do this kind of thing since he has been debunked on numerous occasions. This does not stop him from doing his thing though. I don’t know what his problem is in this respect.
May 10th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
For over three decades, stage performer Uri Geller has tricked millions of people into believing that he possesses supernatural powers, steadfastly insisting that he performs spoon-bending and other tricks through paranormal powers such as mental telepathy.
The truth is that Geller is nothing but a common magician who uses age-old magician’s tricks. (In fact, he’s a third-rate magician having extremely limited repertoire and poor skills.) The big difference is that every responsible magician will freely admit that he’s performing tricks. However, instead of coming clean, Uri Geller instead lies and swears that he’s not a magician at all, and uses no sleight-of-hand, tricked-up props, or any other magician techniques. Geller has always stuck to the absurd line that he performs all his stage stunts by mental power alone, and has conned millions of people into believing this Big Lie that he has supernatural powers.
This deception might seem like it’s all just a harmless gag, but for the fact that this swindler has extracted millions of dollars from the pockets of gullible people who fail to see Geller for the fraud that he clearly is.
Geller’s deceptions have been exposed many times over the years. Earlier this year, while performing on the Israeli TV show “The Successor”, he was caught on camera pulling a magnetic thumb-piece from behind his ear and slipping it onto his thumb, which he then secretly used to move a compass needle — while claiming that the compass was moved by his thoughts alone.
The James Randi Educational Foundation ( http://www.randi.org ) has compiled a list of material on Uri Geller, and James Randi’s book “The Truth About Uri Geller” details this con-man’s pathetic life of lies and deception.
http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Geller-James-Randi/dp/0879751991
http://www.randi.org/uri/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1Y7QR314xA (probably won’t last long)
May 10th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9w7jHYriFo
contains 3 seconds of material that URI Geller claims to own copyright.