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Mexico Wants Payment For Aztec Images
innocent_white_lamb writes "Starbucks brought out a line of cups with prehistoric Aztec images on them. Now the government of Mexico wants them to pay for the use of the images. Does the copyright on an image last hundreds of years?"
Surely they could have included a picture of the offending cups...
You'll note he said "play by the rules", with no mention of the laws. Bring money.
IIRC certain countries or people demand that their "culture" must not be exploited without their consent. I.e. not without paying for it.
I don't think it's just "simple" copyright they're going to field, they're going to insist that the culture of a country belongs to that country and isn't just public property.
Which should be interesting if it sticks. Egypt demanding compensation for every mummy movie, Italy demanding compensation for every time someone does a gladiator movie, Russia demanding compensation for every dystopian totalitarian novel and Israel demanding compensation for every Bible.
I somehow almost wish they get away with it. It should be insanely hilarious.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In most countries which have copyright laws it extends only 50 or so years after the author dies.
Not only that, but it's up to the copyright owner themselves to make the complaint. How on earth does a government "inherit" copyright just because the original owner was from their country? That's like the British government suing anyone who does things based on William Shakespeare because he was English.
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What...
That's crazy. I can sort of understand wanting compensation for something your government created, to recompense taxpayer expense... but to ask recompense for an artistic STYLE your nation was built upon the dead remains of is WAY beyond my usual expectations of baseless money-grabbing.
If there was a copyright on the creation, it has expired. By a few thousand years. There is certainly no derivative works clause you can pull out at this point.
Even if you want to stake some claim on government effort in excavation, the only efforts you can claim ownership of would be individual performances/creations you have based on the original works - anyone else can just base their works on the original and avoid any derivative claims.
Still, my guess is that this isn't really about making a serious claim - it's about getting settlements - about casting nets and seeing what comes back. The governmental version of SCO-style license trolling.
Ryan Fenton
Of course, the Mexican government is going to be sure and give that money to the indiginous tribes, the descendants of the original artists, right?
The RIAA's behavior demonstrates that copyright has nothing to do with remunerating the original authors.
I hate printers.
***But i think a Starbuck mug which you have to pay, does not cover "fair use"...***
That's correct, I think. However, the issue here is not fair use, but public domain. Unlike trademarks, there is supposed to be a time limit on Copyrights. If these are recent "Aztec style" images, then they may well be copyrighted. If they are images actually drawn by the Aztecs then there seems little reason to treat them as protected ... outside Mexico anyway.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey