China leaves clues after using Cruise

Mark Glenning

China’s state television broadcaster has aired footage of what is reported to be from a major Hollywood film and attempted to pass it off as its own.

China Central Television reported a story regarding the Chinese national air force, and showed an explosion that was suspiciously similar to one in a scene from the 1986 Tom Cruise film, Top Gun.

Apparently, it is not the first time that the station has plagiarised content, and the BBC reports that a source familiar with the broadcaster has said that a mechanism is currently under construction to prevent this from happening again.

The scene was aired in a main news programme on 23rd January during a report on a People’s Liberation Army air force training exercise. Over the footage of fighter jets in action, a reporter told viewers that the drill, which featured live fire, was successful, and that every target had been destroyed.

The BBC’s source said that the reporters and editors working at the station were “lazy”, or that the original footage was not good enough to use.

Several years ago, politician Peter Mandelson complained to the EU trade commissioner that CCTV refused to pay royalties on any footage used. Plagiarism is seen as an increasing problem; many plagiarism detection sites exist, and SEO experts would advise that hosting copied content on your website can result in it being removed from a search engine’s index.

So far, CCTV has refused to comment on the matter.

Meanwhile, here’s some footage of a recent game of volleyball the gang at StuckOn played.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdAVH-ZeUHc]