Nokia MiniMO contest sparks plagiarism row

June 22nd, 2010, 15:37 Posted By: wraggster

Nokia appears to have run into trouble with its recent MiniMO contest, which got UK students to shoot movies using their phones, with a trip to the Cannes Advertising festival as a prize.
The contest included a Critic's Choice award, judged by ShootingPeople.org creative director James Mullighan. It went to a film called Forrest Chump by Jemma Lyon.
However, the award has sparked anger on web community b3ta, due to that film's similarity to a film called Forrest Gump in One Minute, in One Take, which has been available on YouTube since February 2009.
"Someone's sent me an entry to a Nokia filmmaking competition that's literally a shot for shot, line for line, idea for idea remake of it," writes the outraged co-creator of the original film.
"I wouldn't mind except the person who entered it has won a "Critics Choice" award out of this rehash, including a ****ING TRIP TO CANNES."

On its official Twitter feed, Nokia has said that neither Nokia nor Mullighan was aware of the original YouTube video, and that "The Critic's Choice Award will be unchanged as winner is already in Cannes".
Update: Meanwhile, Nokia's Mark Hindle has also commented on this story, saying that Nokia is investigating the alleged plagiarism.
Chalk this down as a useful lesson in the perils of user generated content. Meanwhile, the controversy doesn't end there, with commenters on Nokia's blog post announcing the winners of other MiniMO awards criticising the actions taken to fight vote-rigging.

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/37540...plagiarism-row

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