- Okay, and script done, cool,
time to shoot some new videos.
- Oh, uh, knock, knock.
New video, huh, sounds exciting, can I be in it?
- Oh, yeah, see, the thing is,
I do list videos Eugene,
and I don't think the whole skit thing
is really gonna fit anymore, sorry.
- Uh, more list videos, Matt,
why don't you switch it up?
- Whoa, whoa, chill bra, okay,
what do you even know anyway?
You're just a copy of me.
- Yeah, you would know something about copying other people.
- Yeah, wait, what?
- Oh, no, nothing, good luck with the video.
(awkward laughing)
- Well, ha ha, nothing like a good roast.
So the concept of plagiarism is not a new thing,
in fact, history is filled with artists
that have borrowed ideas from other artists,
or in some cases, just straight up copy them.
But the question remains,
at what point does inspiration become plagiarism?
For example, Elvis built his entire career
off of taking music from African American singers.
And there's even a documentary out there called,
Everything is a Remix, that claims that there are,
in fact, no more original ideas,
and that everything that could've ever been done,
has been done in one way or another in the past.
Either way, it's a topic that's definitely worth discussion,
so today I'm going to give you ten cases of
famous people that were accused of plagiarism,
to let you decide was it plagiarism,
or were they simply inspired?
So, here they are, ten famous cases of plagiarism.
Number one is Melania Trump.
My husband is great man and he do good things for America.
Okay, this one was all over the news
and social media recently, so if you didn't see it,
you're probably living under a rock.
On July 18 of this year, Melania Trump,
yes Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump's wife,
gave a speech that some people immediately recognized.
Not because it touched their hearts,
but because they had heard it before, that exact speech,
word for word, it obviously didn't take long for
people to uncover the fact that that exact same speech
was given by Michelle Obama, the First Lady of the United
States, at the Democratic National Convention in 2008,
the same year that Barrack Obama won the Presidency.
Ultimately, although the word plagiarism was never used
by the Trump camp, the blame was put on an
in house staff writer for the Trumps, named Meredith
McGiver, who publicly apologized for the fiasco,
and admitted her mistake.
This woman is great woman and she write real good for me,
okay, I keep saying the speech she speech.
Number two is Cloud Gate.
Words are not the only thing that can be ripped off.
In 2015, an art installation appeared at the
ShinJang region of China,
that looks like a giant metallic bean.
Well, if it looks familiar to you, it should.
Officially called Cloud Gate, but better known to
the public as the Chicago Bean, this piece has
been a long standing piece of artwork by Anish Kapoor
in Chicago, Illinois.
Well, isn't that a coincidence.
The sculpture in China is almost identical,
saved for a few changes on the bottom of it.
Well as it turns out, China has extremely loose lines,
when it comes to intellectual property,
and what's worse, is short of flying to China,
and ringing the artist's neck who took the idea,
there's really not much Kapoor can do about it.
Number three is Drake.
Okay, right off the bat, let me explain that in music
it is extremely common, especially in the hip hop genre,
for people to take ideas from other artists,
in a technique called sampling.
It's very common, it is widely
accepted among almost everybody.
However, this can sometimes cause major problems
between artists in more ways than one.
In particular, Drake has been the target of countless
plagiarism allegations over his career,
but none more famous than those in recent years.
First, back in July of 2014, Drake had to payout
$100,000 to an artist named Rappin' 4-Tay,
that's a great name, after using the exact same lyrics
from the rapper's 1994 song, "Playaz Club",
on YG's song, "Who Do You Love".
- ♫ We get's freaky in the studio late night
♫ That's why the beats that you hear comin' real tight
- ♫ Turnt up in the studio late night
♫ That's why the song's that you hear, comin' real tight
- Now, since then, there have been a few more
accusations here and there, but most recently,
multiple accusations have been made against him
for his song "Hotline Bling", including claims that
Drake actually copied the vocal melody from
the artist D.R.A.M.'s 2015 single "Cha Cha".
(fun rhythmic music)
But it doesn't end there, because on top of that,
even the music video for the song uses near
exact copies of light installations created
by 72 year old artist James Turrell.
Now, that wouldn't be too suspect if it wasn't for
the fact that Drake admitted to loving Turrell's work,
and even has Instagram pictures of himself
standing in one of his installations.
Oh Lucy, you got some explaining to do!
Maybe him and this Terrell guy used to be friends,
and he was just bitter at the fact that
Terrell doesn't call him anymore,
and maybe he was walking through his installation one day,
and was like, "Hey yo, Terrell,
"you used to call me on my cell phone, man."
Hey, wait a minute.
Number four is Martin Luther King Jr.
Yes, even those who do the most good in this world
have been subject to plagiarizing.
Back in 1955, King wrote his dissertation for
a doctor degree at Boston University entitled
"A Comparison of the Conceptions of God
"in the Thinking of Paul Tillage and Henry Nelson Wieman".
God damn, that's quite the mouthful,
he couldn't of shortened that.
However, it was later discovered that King actually
stole lines and titles from another doctoral dissertation
written just three years earlier,
by a man named Jack Bruiser, who by the way,
has the greatest name of all time.
And even in certain sections of the paper,
he lifted entire sentences and
some longer passages from the works of Tillage.
And believe it or not, even King's iconic
I Have a Dream speech was, as some would say,
inspired by a speech that an African American preacher
named Archibald Carey Junior gave,
to the Republic National Convention in 1952.
Number five is Joe Biden.
For those of you that don't know this,
current Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden,
actually once ran for the actual presidency back in 1988.
However, what many people don't remember,
is that his campaign was plagued by allegations of
plagiarism, when he used, and didn't properly cite,
several lines from a British politician speech
that was given just one year earlier.
Now that one incident provoked further investigation
into his past, where rival campaigns were able to
discover a major plagiarism scandal in the law school
that he attended as a young man, back in the 1960s.
As it turns out, Biden copied five pages of a 15
page article for a class, and for that,
received a failing grade.
Now, of course, this mistake in Biden's past was revived,
and played out by the media covering the elections,
and eventually, it actually forced Biden
to withdraw from the race.
Number six is Johnny Cash.
♫ (Mumbling)
I'm sorry, I like Johnny Cash,
but that's how all his songs sound.
In 1968, famous country music artist, Johnny Cash,
got caught up in a plagiarism lawsuit,
over both the lyrics and the melody of one
of his most famous songs, "Folsom Prison Blues".
The 1955 songs content was heavily borrowed
from a Gordon Jenkins song called "Crescent City Blues",
that was released only in 1953.
Cash ended up settling with Jenkins out of court,
with a payment of around $100,000, which, if adjusted for
inflation, is worth almost $900,000 in today's money.
God damn, no wonder the guy's last name was Cash,
dude be paying people off like nothing.
♫ Take this money and go away
Number seven is Helen Keller.
Helen Keller was a famous deaf and blind girl,
who learned to communicate and write at a young age,
despite her disabilities.
In 1891, when she was just 11 years old,
Keller wrote a short story called "The Frost King",
the story was published by the Goodson Gazette,
but readers started noticing similarities
between it and a story by Margaret Canby
called "The Frost Fairies".
Now, it's worth noting that Keller adamantly denied her
accusations that she had plagiarized any part of her story,
however, the plot thickened when it was discovered
that Ann Sullivan found a copy of "The Frost Fairies"
that was most likely read to Keller while she was away.
Now this is an interesting one,
because some people actually believe that this incident
can be explained as a case of cryptomnesia,
which is a state where a forgotten memory returns
without it being recognized as such by the person,
who believes it to be something new and original.
Number eight is Justin Bieber and Usher.
Whoa, hold up now, Justin Bieber involved in a scandal,
what is this world coming to?
Back in 2010, Justin Bieber released "Somebody to Love",
a track written by Usher,
who also sang on the track as well.
Either you loved it or it was the bane of your existence.
Well, the song was a massive hit, and currently
has 350 million views on YouTube,
which helped his album "My World 2.0"
sell over 5.2 million copies worldwide.
And he did all with that haircut too, that's impressive.
However, it wasn't long before Devin the Dude Copeland,
and Mario Overton, realized that they were listening
to a version of their own song,
claiming that the track was a copy by the same name,
and it was one that they had previously recorded
just two years earlier, in 2008.
So, of course, the two men sued the Usher Bieb's duo
for 10 million dollars, but the case was dismissed in 2014,
but it doesn't end there.
Recently, just a year ago in 2015,
the ruling was actually overturned and one judge
ruled that the two songs choruses
are actually similar enough that Copeland and Overton
have a definite case.
As of right now, only time will tell
who's going to win that battle.
One thing I know for certain is he clearly plagiarized
that haircut from a cabbage patch doll.
Number nine is Shia Lebeouf.
In 2013, Shia LeBeouf beecame the center of a media frenzy,
involving his blatant plagiarism of graphic
novelist Daniel Clowes.
LeBeouf's short film "Howard Cantour.com",
literally almost entirely copied Clowes
comic book titled "Justin M. Damiano".
But here's where it gets interesting because
when he was confronted with the allegations,
Lebeouf took to twitter to issue a public apology,
but it wasn't a normal one.
Ironically, the apology was extremely similar to
a response submitted to Yahoo Answers on the topic
of, believe it or not, plagiarism.
Shia has been accused on numerous other occasions,
of ripping off other people's work in public statements,
Twitter posts, and his own graphic novels.
Do it, just do it!
Don't let your dreams be dreams, take other peoples!
(clapping)
Thank you, thank you.
And number 10 is J.R.R. Tolkien.
Okay, this one's gonna shock a lot of you, but yes,
even author of the famous "Lord of the Rings" books,
was subject to plagiarism allegations.
Fans and not so fans have been literally arguing for
decades over whether Tolkien had stolen multiple plot
points from composer Richard Wagner's opera,
"Ring of the Nibelung".
Stolen ideas precious.
(gargling)
The allegations were such a big problem that plagued
Tolkien, right up until his death,
that right before his passing on September 2, 1973,
Tolkien denied adamantly the accusations one final time.
But research shows that the author actually
completed a study of Wagner's book,
just before he started writing Lord of the Rings,
and it's really hard to deny the similarities.
Plagiarism, boil it, mash it, stick it in a book.
So that's it, but I wanna know from you guys,
did all of the people on this list plagiarize?
Or were they simply inspired?
Or were some plagiarizers, and others,
like I said, simply inspired?
So, leave a comment below,
I would love to know your opinion.
Thank you for watching,
and I will see you guys in the next one, peace!