- 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!
I gave him chance to admit/apologize here. After a year of being unsubbed, I thought maybe this would be the redemption. The joke at the beginning was a start. The rest.... He just wanted clicks with this title/topic.
He's the one person I would ignore at VidCon.