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Who Owns Your Culture?
Galvatron writes "The Maori people of New Zealand are suing Lego for creating a polynesian-themed game without their permission, according to CNN. Ridiculous? You bet. But it's just one example of the kind of thing the Hague Convention could make possible."
If this holds up, they'll soon find themselves being sued by pirates, medieval knights, firemen, and the association of people with bumpy yellow heads.
How about Germans suing Disney for Cinderella? Would Disney then blame it on the brothers Grimm?
Will Americans sue Mark Twain's heirs for not asking permission?
Will Jews sue Christians for Jewish heritage in the Bible?
How about anyone who has ever had a newspaper article written about them? Go sue the newspaper!
And my favorite: my name, my financial records, my address, all that info -- seems to be my IP, eh? Except of course my name, which is part my parents' IP, and grandparents, etc. And the street name, which is the heritage of not only the guy it was named after, but everybody else living on it. And the city name, state, country, etc.
I don't see how any of these are anything more than just the next step in pushing IP ownership. Pretty soon all info will be so tightly controlled, no one will be able to speak or write without violating somebody's IP, and in most cases, the true ownership will be so hard to pin down, there will be a zillion people suing each other as to who actually owns the IP! I imagine we will have to put royalties into escrow accounts until that's settled.
I say let's go for it, get IP rights so twisted they will have to be thrown out altogether.
--
Infuriate left and right
NEWS FLASH:Monty Python has been served notice that the heirs of King Arthur are going to sue them for creating an Arthurian-themed movie without the expressed consent of the family.
grub
Yes, I know Arthur was a legend :)
Trolling is a art,
I dunno about you, but if I were a member of an indigenous people which had been decimated in the past couple of centuries by various effects of European contact, I'm not sure I'd want some Danish toy company commodifying my identity either.
:P
You missed the point. It's ridiculous to think there could actually be a legal basis to such a suit.
In a way, it's rather sublime. It's intellectual property taken to the extreme. I almost wish this would happen, as it would provide a great example of what's wrong with IP laws.
Of course, I _almost_ wish it... with the way things have been going as of late, they might actually win...
By this same standard, any game which features characters with american names, and is in english, with allusions to the american culture, should be under similar scrutiny.
I'm sure that if the Lego were a Polynesian company, this wouldn't be an issue either.
I dunno about you, but if I were a member of an indigenous people which had been decimated in the past couple of centuries by various effects of European contact, I'm not sure I'd want some Danish toy company commodifying my identity either.
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
I dunno about you, but if I were a member of an indigenous people which had been decimated in the past couple of centuries by various effects of European contact, I'm not sure I'd want some Danish toy company commodifying my identity either.
I know I feel pretty commodified by the Ken doll.
OK, I'm being facetious, and since I'm at the top of fhe food chain, I can only say so much. But this whole thing is patently ridiculous and I'm not the slightest bit worried about it becoming a reality. Once you start down that slippery slope, where do you stop? Are we allowed to TALK about Maoris without infringing on their culture? Write about them? Where's the line? It's absurd. It's a short step from here to banning black Barbies. Why? What is gained by doing that?
Your identity is not compromised when someone makes a doll that looks like you. Surely Maoris have more important battles to fight than this one. How about seeking more representation in the NZ parliament? How about addressing questions of land confiscation? How about preserving Maori language and culture through sharing and outreach, rather than trying to establish a stamp of unenforceable "ownership" over whatever incredibly vague notion of "likeness" they're trying to tie this thing to?
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Let's sue Matt Groening for creating an American culture-themed TV show without the express permission of the U.S. government . . .
The submittor should have read the article more carefully.
They are suing because Lego is trademarking Maori words for use in the game. Sheesh.
I'll sue this website on the basis they have created a geek-theme website without my permission. As a geek I should be consulted and compensated.
I will also sue major hollywood studios for the portrayal of geeks in film, because it infringes on my intellectual property rights to geek language and culture.
but where does *education of children* fit into this discussion of intellectual property? lego has done something good, in my opinion - they've created something at least *vaguely* culturally accurate to portray a Maori or Polynesian group. children who play with these legos won't think of Polynesian cultures as the grand 'other'... this is quite unlike Hollywood, or other groups that mangle culture to fit whatever story they're doing.
Looks like the price of Civilization III just went up, A LITTLE BIT.
Cro-Magnon spokesman Korg has issued a press release stating that the Cro-Magnon are suing Blue Seude for infliction of emotional distress.
Their suit, Korg contends, stems not from the repeated use of the phrase "Ooga-Chaka", but from the tens of thousands of hours of airplay afforded to "Hooked on a Feeling? one of the worst songs ever recorded. The Cro-Magnon claim that this threat to human survival affects their 70,000-year-old culture the most, and is amplified by their innate susceptibility to the introductory refrain. They concluded that the effect is deliberate, according to the release.
Also named in the suit are several hundred radio stations, '70s-night disco bars, and Cher ("just for the hell of it", said Korg).
--Blair
It's all iffy territory, really. There are folks in the US who get pissed because Disney commodifies traditional western cultural symbols, fairy tales, and works of art (Hercules, Pocahontas, Hunchback of Notre-Dame), and I know I'm one of them. They don't necessarily blatantly misrepresent something of cultural significance, but they remove many of the 'difficult points' to make it more accessible. Unfortunately, when you do that you often remove a lot of the very subtle but highly important elements of it that you've overlooked in your 'popularization.' Remember, culture IS what it seems to be. Children are growing up right around us without a clear sense of history because of all the 'tales for children' that exist to make learning easier. We don't pass along cultural identity to our descendants by showing them finger-paintings of the Mona Lisa (well, not usually). Why should we be bothered that the Maori would like to prevent that from happening to them? -lit geek on the loose