Australian Actresses Are Plagiarizing Scott Aaronson's Quantum Mechanics Lecture to Sell Printers

I am not sure that "plagiarizing" is the right word here. But it is a remarkable situation--and there ought to be a way for Robin Hanson's friend Scott Aaronson's to get a printer out of it:

Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » Australian actresses are plagiarizing my quantum mechanics lecture to sell printers: I tried to think of a witty, ironic title for this post, but in the end, I simply couldn’t. The above title is a literal statement of fact...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saWCyZupO4U

Comments

[christofay]

If it's Nicole Kidman, then I'm in the market for a new printer. Where do I go to get sold by the ad?

[jerry]

We have a claim, but I'm not sure we know the direction of plagiarizing here.....

[Jeff H.]

It's not the actresses who are plagiarizing, it's the *writer* of the commercial who is.

I'd think you Californians would be all too aware of that by now.

[Bruce Webb]

Who owns reality? We have an intellectual property system that allows individuals to copyright genomes and patent natural compounds. This in itself seems like a bazaar extension of quantum mechanics to reality, the proof becomes imbedded in the observation. But where do you draw the line?

In biology if you are the first to identify a new species you get the right to name it, but you do not thereby get ownership rights over the whole species. In scholarship generally if you make an extended argument to prove a specific fact you have ownership over the argument, no one has the right to pass off your hard work as their own. But do you have ownership over the conclusion?

The whole thing is amusing and I hope Scott gets a free printer and/or a weekend at the beach with some Australian models but in the cold light of day I am not sure that the boundary of Fair Use has been crossed here. If I read something in a book that seems to be a clear description of some aspect of reality, i.e Adrianus Falvius Decimus died in 434 BC, I am not sure that I am obligated to respect your word order as somehow privileged. Just about everything we know about the world is the result of somebody's work product, which doesn't mean we cite Newton or Aristotle at every turn.

Every once in a while I will see some phrasing float back in the course of a comment thread that I am convinced was originally formulated by me. Should I be offended at not being cited or proud that something I wrote stuck in someone's head? I think the latter. Hardly anyone says "Joe told me this joke the other day" instead it is almost always "I heard this joke the other day" because with jokes original authorship is generally not the point, once launched they become part of the overall culture. Now certainly there is a great deal of difference between jokes and the precise phrasing of some sentences in a book about quantum mechanics, it is unlikely that this just stuck in someone's head, but you can push the ownership of word sequencing, like gene sequencing, only so far.

[rea]

In scholarship generally if you make an extended argument to prove a specific fact you have ownership over the argument, no one has the right to pass off your hard work as their own. But do you have ownership over the conclusion?

You miss the point--they are not merely reproducing his reasoning about QM--they are repeating one of his lectures word-for-word.

It can't be fair use either, because they didn't attribute the material to him, and comment on it--they just stole it.

[Maynard Handley]

If Scott Aaronson is making this claim seriously rather than ironically, the fact is that he is a major-league asshole; the kind of blood-sucking cretin that is destroying our cultural life through infinite-duration copyright and DRM, and who apparently feels no shame is destroying academic life in the same way.

And for what? What's so special about the statement the second model said? Read any of a hundred pop physics books and you can make the same vapid meaningless claims. Regardless of whether Garrett Lisi is right or not, he's at least saying something verifiable, not just playing madlibs with a quantum computing vocabulary.

The more interesting question, I would say, is: is the pool of models really so shallow that these two were the most convincing line-readers they could find? I mean, jesus, Kaley Cuoco (Penny on _The Big Bang Theory_) could say them and sound more like she actually meant them.

[John Emerson]

Probably the models' connection to quantum physics was Australian singer Olivia Newton-John, whose grandfather was Physics Nobelist Max Born.

[wood turtle]

Quantum physics is getting kind of old, wouldn't you say? It was around in the 70's when I was in college.

I don't think you can plagiarize the content, but maybe the wording. About a printer's worth I would say.

[sm]

He should go for the printer and glory in his moment of semi-fame on the web.

[jerry]

Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics
http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm

[John Emerson]

Hedy Lamarr:

http://britneyspears.ac/physics/intro/hedy.htm

[Gray]

"I am not sure that "plagiarizing" is the right word here."
Why the hesitancy? They copied his lecture verbatim. What else is this, if not plagiarism???

[Bruce Webb]

Gary you need to brush up on the concepts of both "Irony" and "Fair Use".

More seriously if I express a well established fact or for that matter commonly believed fallacy in a plain English sentence that happens to duplicate something ever put into print that is not plagiarism. No one is required to do some full contextual Nexis-Lexis search every time you write anything, the world would grind to a halt.

Now certainly this was not a coincidence, but grabbing a sentence or two out of a random text book to sell printers does not rise to the level of intellectual theft. If repeated amounts of textual material word for word started appearing in a competing set of printed lectures then we could expect the equivalent of pistols at dawn on the Faculty Green, but I take Mr. or Prof. Aaronson at his word here, at some point the world just moves beyond the powers of irony.