Electronic Frontier Foundation Sues Uri Geller 240
reversible physicist writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued spoon-bender Uri Geller for using 'baseless copyright claims' to silence critics who question his paranormal powers. Brian Sapient posted on YouTube a 14-minute excerpt from the 1993 PBS NOVA program 'Secrets of the Psychics,' in which skeptic James Randi says Geller's spoon-bending feats were simple tricks. YouTube took down the video after Geller complained — his lawyers claim that 10 seconds of the video are owned by Geller. A shorter excerpt of the video is still up on YouTube."
Mr Spoons (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly Uri Geller has no "psychic" abilities whatsoever and yet he has built his career on claims that he does and this is how he earns his money. Rather than offering scientifically measured demonstrations of his "powers" he attempts instead to simply keep his critics silent. Obviously this is totally reprehensible behaviour which shares some similarity with the behaviour of record companies whoes original purpose is rapidly diminishing and are also using copyright laws to prop themselves up.
I don't think the answer is necessarily changing the laws of copyright ( except correcting the ludicrous length of time protection can be claimed ) but making sure that people claiming it's protection are doing so properly. It would appear in this case there are no copyright violations since Mr Gellers material is only be critised and excerpted which is perfectly legal. Instead I advocate the slaughter of anyone, individuals or entire companies who attempt to abuse copyright laws in this manner. This should send a strong message that the public do want their rights trampled on and will not let individual members suffer bullying and intimidation for larger individuals or companies.
Anything to Perpetuate the Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Geller is only one step away from the televangelists that want you to lay hands on your TV and feel the power... and then send in your contribution.
The Amazing Randi (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Amazing Randi (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Anything to Perpetuate the Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
And so spoke Lazarus: It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics
Psychic or Shaman same rule apply: Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.
Re:More on this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You think Uri Gellar little scam can touch the massive hocus pocus peddled by guys like the Pope or other so-called "religious leaders"? At least Gellar is somewhat entertaining and doesn't expect me to give him 10 percent of my income and the nicest few hours of a Sunday morning, and he doesn't promise I can wish away all the bad things in the world, despite all evidence to the contrary. And he doesn't try to make people feel guilty about sex.
Religion is the last bastion of political correctness. Now we're all supposed to look the other way when a candidate for president wears magical underwear and not ask him how he can believe that stuff about the golden plates in the desert and all. No wonder we end up with guys like Bush.
No, Uri Gellar, cheap flim-flam he may be, can't hold a candle to someone like this guy in Colorado, Ted Haggard, who's preaching "family values" and having prayer meetings with the President during the day and snorting crystal with male prostitutes in the evening.
Re:The Amazing Randi (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More on this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you dont aggree with a post, try and be constructive and say why you disagree. Dont just mod the post as a troll because it offends your christian sensibilities.
Personally I gree with the parent poster. At least you can safely laugh at Uri Gellar in the knowledge that all he can bend is spoons. There are much more worring people out there who can bend other peoples minds into doing their bidding.
Re:Mr Spoons (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets take magicians, we all know they don't know magic, they can't do half the things they claim, so how come they can claim to do so and be used as entertainers as such? Uri Geller is a creepy asshole, we all know this, but it does not take away from his entertainment value and if you consider him on par with a kids show magician or a clown then his "act" is perfectly legit.
Why circle out this guy and not the others?
Re:... still more ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Still more can be found here, on Damn Interesting, which provides an entertaining read on the things he claims to have done, and the efforts to debunk them. From what I've read, they haven't ALL been debunked.
Technically, neither has Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, and I'll put about the same probability of truth on each.
Re:Mr Spoons (Score:5, Insightful)
Uri Geller, on the other hand, claims his abilities are true. He is partly responsible for the wasting of tens of millions of dollars in research around the world from governments doing research on him and people like him, particularly during the cold war. Some people base their lives off of these frauds. They do not benefit society at all.
We can equate them to one another when magicians start ruining lives when they pick the correct card out of a deck.
Re:They're just jealous but (Score:5, Insightful)
Uri Geller *always* has two spoons. Not hard to figure out his 'magic powers' when he only lets you examine one of them
monk.e.boy
Re:The Amazing Randi (Score:4, Insightful)
In order to make moderation easier, I also think that it would be a good idea to sort equally modded comments in reverse-chronological order. In fact, one can assume that a post that didn't get modded up during several hours will stay at 0 or 1 so most moderators could see the most recently posted stuff, which bear a greater probability of being worth a mod point.
The current moderation system assumed that most stories would not get more than 50 comments but nowadays 200/300 somments are fairly common.
Just my two euro-cents
Re:More on this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not catholic are you? Exorcisms, Transubstantiation (bread into flesh, wine into blood), resurection, heaven, hell, the rapture (wait, that's evangelicals), saints (need a miracle to be a saint remember, and what's the definition of a miracle?)
Course if you're a Mormon, how about the magic underwear? Or john smith's magic hat?
Quakers (and southern baptists, and a few others) still speak in tongues when the "holy spirit" takes them over. They've even been known to... well... quake with feeling for the lord.
The devil? God? Creationism? The great flood? The concept of sin? Passover? Easter? Reincarnation? Any of these things ringing a bell?
However, you are at least partially right, over the centuries cults (erm, religions) have gotten very good at claiming things that are hard to disprove. However you might want to check out Richard Dawkins' new book "The God Delusion". You're also right, people tend to be easily fooled into believing nonsense, look at how many devout christians of various faiths there are in the US. Hell, the president believes the the jury is still out on evolution. For that matter a CBS survey back in 04 found that 45% of the people who voted for Bush and 24% of the votes for Kerry wanted creationism taught in schools instead of evolution. That's a crap load of people that think evolution is BS. (There's also 3 republican presidental candidates (for now) that state they do NOT believe in evolution.
Re:More on this.... (Score:2, Insightful)
I realize that when you're a young "atheist", head all full of newfound rhetorical and "logical" techniques, it seems cool to paint organized religion as a blight upon the world using the broadest strokes, but I assure you that it just annoys the rest of us. I've gone through a fairly wide philosophical and religious spectrum during my lifetime so far, there have been points where I would agree with you, and there have been points where I'd wish your type would shut up and stay off my "side" because immature religion bashing in no way helps the atheist cause or ethos, and now I'm at the point where I just smack my forehead and hope that you get over it for your own sake.
For the record, I'm not much of a gambling man, but I'd put money on some serious atheists with mod points either shoving you down or refusing to waste one saving you. That's what happens when you start spouting inflammatory nonsense and making yourself, as well as atheism, look stupid and childish.
Back to the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More on this.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Amazing Randi (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More on this.... (Score:3, Insightful)
What's interesting is that the church investigates and aproves some of these miracles, but believing in them is not actually required to be a catholic... they leave it to personal choice.
To be fair, that IS a smart choice... because:
- Many people will choose not to believe in miracles and that's fine. I believe you can be a perfectly good scientist but still believe in god, follow the teachings of Jesus and practice the christian faith (some of them, at least).
- Many people will choose to believe in miracles anyway... they want to believe that Virgin Mary chooses to mark a grilled cheese sandwich with her face. There are a lot of these people, and the church just can't drive them away with a stick and deny their faith. The cure would probably be worse than the disease.
- Accepting the possibility of a miracle allows the church to send a very skeptic investigator to check things out... most likely to debunk it, since it's not good for the church to have someone with a direct line to god. However, even in absolute good faith it's a good idea for the church to debunk at minimum the most obviously fraudulent miracles, since letting them pass gives the faith a bad name.
Re:More on this.... (Score:3, Insightful)
That being said, I think the religion end of it is irrelevant and more often than not is used as a tool to justify inflicting great crimes "in the name of God" on various other differing groups. Christians are by no means the only guilty party, but given that they come in such high numbers you just see it a little more often...well unless of coarse you are in the US then its only islamic folks that do it. The key here is that quite a few people DID catch on to the whole "love thy neighbor is the most important commandment" stuff that Jesus taught and they DO get together and they DO help out. These people I believe would do this without some God figure watching over them, they took to the teachings of a good and honest man and followed them. They are to be commended for their compassion, and behavior rather than their beliefs. I only disagree with the MOST part because that has not been my experience at all, some are insane lunatics, some are genuinely good people working for the benefit of mankind, MOST sit around tithe their 10% discuss the latest gossip and while they may believe in being good, generally pay lipservice and frequently do little in terms of getting their own hands dirty doing good.
Re:Moving a compass (Score:3, Insightful)
He is a magician. Magicians make their living creating illusions of magic which are usually no more than sleight of hand, props, etc. Even though I know every magic trick is not "magic", I still enjoy the show. Having known several professional magicians, it still amazes me when someone pulls off a great looking trick. Hell, at work the other day, I did a Balducci lift, explaining how it works, and a coworker thought I really did it (it's all in the angle/body positioning).
I find it more amusing the people will spend the time and energy trying to debunk guys who are out there trying to do it for a living. It's entertaining to some, I suppose, but there seem to be people genuinely angry that someone out there can perform a magic trick. I don't get these people, but hey, whatever.
Re:More on this.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Since that is apparently directed at Muslims... the vast majority of Muslims do not believe that in any way, and the Koran is actually very clear on the rules of war, prohibiting things like the targeting of civilians, kidnapping, wanton destruction of buildings, torture, or killing any more than necessary to achieve the objectives. The fact that, out of over 1 billion people, a few thousand are so dangerously sociopathic as to believe that drivel is 9sadly) unsurprising, and criticizing the entire religion for it is simply unfair.
"Prove it. I'm not buying it for a second. I've found religious types to be among the most intolerant people on the planet. Let's see, atheists are bad. Homosexuals are bad. Science is bad. People who believe in a different religion from you are bad. And so on, ad infinitum. Guess what happens to bad people? They often get beaten, locked up, or killed. Yeah, religion is great."
You realize that the entire Civil Rights Movement was built on the efforts of religious groups, right? I've never heard the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as 'intolerant" before. The ministers at the Episcopalian church in the town I grew up have decided not to perform any weddings in protest of their denomination's decision not to recognize same-sex marriage or allow the ceremonies to occur in their churches. Pope John Paul II was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end "communist" (quotes mine, for ideological clarity) oppression, and was very active in trying to mend millenniums old rifts with other religions (Judaism, Islam) and denominations (Eastern Orthodox, Anglicanism), as well as being a friend of the Dalai Lama. The number of very highly regarded homeless shelters, soup kitchens, mission schools and hospitals, grief counseling centers, scholarships, and other charity and community service efforts organized and operated by religious groups is beyond count.
You're letting a few bad apples ruin your opinion of a group larger than you can imagine, and then acting as if you're smarter than anyone else because of it. Sure there are some bad people who justify doing bad things with all sorts of reasons, and unfortunately religion is a very popular one to use, but they are far from the majority, though they do tend to shout considerably louder.
I'm not a member of any organized religion, by the way.
Re:The Amazing Randi (Score:3, Insightful)
Because nobody on the Internet knows about Xenu or other crap. It's never been portrayed and mocked in popular cartoons, for that matter.
Re:The Amazing Randi (Score:3, Insightful)
Over here, "ordinary" people who don't know what scientology (the church/company/crime syndicate/terrorist organisation) is really like will generally view them as fraudsters at best, but not necessarily as criminals who will do anything that's necessary to achieve their goals, with no concern for laws; those few in the USA I've talked to about this who weren't geeks generally saw them even less critical, thinking of them as weird but ultimately still being "just another religion".
I can only talk about my own experiences, of course, but I don't think that society in general is really aware of what scientology is and works like, neither in Europe nor in North America.
Re:More on this.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, religion does influence what people do; but either the religion *as such* (no matter whether it's islam, christianity or whatever) is responsible for the actions of its members, in which case you can't say that suicide bombers acting in the name of islam have nothing to do with it, for example, or it's not - and in that case, the fact that Dr. King, for example, was a christian is wholly irrelevant, too, at least insofar as that christianity cannot take credit for what he did. It may have inspired him, but then, suicide bombers' actions are inspired by islam (assuming they're muslims, although most suicide bombers seem to be), too.
You can't have it both ways.