Shia LaBeouf: Plagiarism Apology Mocks The World With Sky Writing
Shia LaBeouf’s plagiarism apology just took an epic turn since he’s written it in the skies.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr, LaBeouf’s original apology was almost comical since he apparently plagiarized even the apology writing.
The short film Howard Cantour apparently borrowed whole sections of dialogue from the comic Justin M. Damiano, which was written and created by Daniel Clowes. But a whole year passed before anyone noticed the resemblance:
“The first I ever heard of the film was this morning when someone sent me a link. I’ve never spoken to or met Mr. LaBeouf. I’ve never even seen one of his films that I can recall — and I was shocked, to say the least, when I saw that he took the script and even many of the visuals from a very personal story I did six or seven years ago and passed it off as his own work. I actually can’t imagine what was going through his mind.”
So Shia LaBeouf took to Twitter to issue an apology:
Copying isn't particularly creative work. Being inspired by someone else's idea to produce something new and different IS creative work.
— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 17, 2013
But even weeks later people were still bashing the actor on Twitter so he kept making more apologies, including:
“I want to thank all of you who have written in and created groups and protested. Even though I wish I hadn’t made so many of you angry.”
But it just so happens that this “apology” mirrors Mark Zuckerberg’s apology in 2006 made on behalf of Facebook. And then another sincere sounding apology turned out to be a complete cut and paste from UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, which even used the British spellings of certain words. So, finally, Shia LaBeouf admitted he was yanking everyone’s chains:
“I am sorry for all the plagiarized tweets, they all were unintelligent, ambiguous and needlessly hurtful. You have my apologies for offending you for thinking I was being serious instead of accurately realizing I was mocking you.”
As if to mock the world further, Shia decided to hire a sky writing airplane to put this message over Los Angeles: “I AM SORRY DANIEL CLOWES.”
CLOUD:
– vapor floating in the atmosphere
– remote servers used to SHARE DATA
– to make LESS CLEAR or TRANSPARENT pic.twitter.com/jw9JlEi791— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) January 1, 2014
I don’t know about you, but I think the sincerity of Shia LaBeouf’s plagiarism apology is pretty transparent at this point. But after posting the sky writing tweet he went on to do an interview he made his position on plagiarism laws blatantly clear:
“The word law is against my principles. The problem begins with the legal fact that authorship is inextricably bound up in the idea of ownership and the idea of language as Intellectual property. Language and ideas flow freely between people Despite the law. It’s not plagiarism in the digital age – it’s repurposing. Copyright law has to give up on its obsession with ‘the copy’ The law should not regulate “copy’s” or “reproductions” on there own. It should instead regulate uses – like public distributions of copyrighted work – That connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster. The author was the person who had been authorized by the state to print there work. They were the ones to be held accountable for the ideas. THE FIRST LAWS ON AUTHORSHIP WERE USED TO CENSOR & PERSECUTE THE WRITERS WHO DARED PUBLISH RADICAL IDEAS. Simple – should creation have to check with a lawyer?”
Do you agree with Shia LaBeouf on plagiarism laws or do you think he’s simply being a troll?
