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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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Actually, the article clarifies that these images are from the pre-Aztec ruins of Teotihuacan, which would make them at least 1,000 years old.
(or so I heard)
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
Walt Disney would be proud.
That's like the British government suing anyone who does things based on William Shakespeare because he was English.
Or for something even more absurd: the modern British government, which is descended from a system put in place by the Normans, suing someone who uses imagery from Beowulf.
Mexico is run by a culture and people primarily descended from the people who killed off the Aztecs. Yes, there are plenty of Indians in Mexico today, but they're pretty much at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. The Mexican government is the heir of the Spanish Empire.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The real trouble happened when tried to put 2 Aztecs in 1 Cup. Associated a whole new twist to the taste of their coffee.
FTA: "The government archaeological agency said Wednesday it will decide by next week whether Starbucks should pay any fees. "
Has anyone thought yet to ask where the images came from? It seems obvious to me that what could have happened was that Starbucks took photographs taken by the government archaeological society, which the society may have used for post-cards, t-shirts, or other tourism items and placed them on Starbucks mugs without paying fees to the Mexican government for those photographs.
Those photographs would then be copyright, just as any photograph would.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
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?
What's next? We're going to have to pay the Italians for using Roman letters and the Saudi's for using Arabic numbers? Ridiculous!
Has anyone thought yet to ask where the images came from? It seems obvious to me that what could have happened was that Starbucks took photographs taken by the government archaeological society, which the society may have used for post-cards, t-shirts, or other tourism items and placed them on Starbucks mugs without paying fees to the Mexican government for those photographs.
I tried to search around the web a bit, but the only thing I found was this quote from the Washington Examiner
Mexico's government archaeological agency says the images of the Aztec calendar stone and the Pyramid of the Moon from the pre-Aztec ruins of Teotihuacan are the intellectual property of the nation. The agency will decide how much Starbucks should pay.
Which seems to imply, to my mind, that this isn't the matter of specific photographs being copied, but rather that the Mexican government considers any photographs of these artefacts/sites to be the intellectual property of Mexico.
That being said I have yet to find any site or news provider, that referees to this case in more detail; so I shall hold my judgement until then.
The Long Now Foundation
"if they grease the right palms"
Clearly, he meant something else.
This is contemplated in the federal law about Monuments and Archeological, artistics, and historic sites. It is not exactly a question of copyright, but those images are considered "property of the nation".
Ussually the fees are not very high, but depends on the use of the images. Since this was part of a comercial product, the INAH has to autorize its use, and charge a fee, used for conservation of the monuments. The problem is that the design company that sold the images to starbuck should have request permision to the INAH first. There are no penalties involved.
The permisions can be requested here:
http://www.cofemer.gob.mx/BuscadorTramites/BuscadorGeneralHomoclave.asp?SIGLASDEPENDENCIA=INAH&accion=Buscando
If you took a photograph nad use it for personal or divulgation, there is no problem, but if you used them for a comercial purpose you need permision.
http://dti.inah.gob.mx/
The RIAA's behavior demonstrates that copyright has nothing to do with remunerating the original authors.
I hate printers.
However, most experts consider these numbers to be overstated. For example, the sheer logistics associated with sacrificing 84,000 victims would be overwhelming, mos historia asume the aztec put a few extra zeroes as propaganda...
the arqueological excavation have revelead a few hundred sacrifices, far from the thousands claimed...
by comparition, in Auswtiz with their four gass chambers wrking 24 a day, they could execute about 4,000 prisioners a day...
The Tlaxcaltecas also killed and sacrifice Aztecs... Theyre power was very similar, it required only a small force to push de balance... that force was Cortez.
At the end, germs killed much more aztecs and Tlaxcaltecas than the war.
Trivia. The aztecs.... called themsleves meshicas... their gods had forbiten to call themselves aztecs...
Actually, IIRC the Arabic number system had it's origin in India. There was an excellent BBC program on the history of mathematics which showed some early examples.
Acording to the aztec, their Tlatoani Ahuizotl, persoally killed 84,400 prisioners in four days using a stone knife...
For copyright violations? Harsh...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
***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
Mexico is run by a culture and people primarily descended from the people who killed off the Aztecs. Yes, there are plenty of Indians in Mexico today, but they're pretty much at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. The Mexican government is the heir of the Spanish Empire.
Uh, no. It's not that simple.
First off, "Aztec" is a broad and external moniker generally given to the empire dominated by the Mexica, a specific tribe. Scholars these days tend to refer to the people of Mexico widely as Nahuas, that is, people who speak Nahuatl. With that in mind, descent should not be considered simply from the Mexica, because many of the people who still exhibit a strongly indigenous culture are non-Mexica Nahuas.
Second, nobody killed off the Aztecs. That's purely a myth. Yes, many were killed, but they didn't just all die. They had children, and the children had children, etc. Through intermarriage, fornication, or rape, the Spaniards and the Nahua mixed. This process was is called mestizaje. Hence a monument in Mexico city marking a key battle reads, "Neither a victory or a defeat, but the painful birth of a mestizo people." The intention of the Spaniards had surely been to completely erase and replace Nahua culture, but they didn't succeed; they couldn't succeed. In such an encounter there tends to be some continuance with what came before, especially inasmuch as the culture before had some connections with the conquering culture that helped the new culture to take root. Mexicans today are not purely Spanish. We don't just fit-in in Spain. The irony is that the cultures that still carry on many indigenous practices, likewise, are not purely indigenous, but they often have taken on many traits from the Spaniards but apparently preserved more traditional elements than the majority of the conquered. Mexico is not as simple as saying that the Spaniards conquered, killed, and replaced; really it's more of a complex, evolutionary situation, where both sides formed something new.
Of course, some troll will probably insist that there's no native culture remaining because most don't speak Nahuatl and don't worship the sun or use the calendar, but it's not as simple as that. I recommend reading Louise Burkhart's The Slippery Earth, Viviana Diaz Balsera's The Pyramid Under the Cross, or pretty much anything by Jaime Lara.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
One thing to take note is that Mexico has different ideas concerning intellectual property. The national emblem for example is ruled by a strict code that does not let allow it to be reproduced for anything other than governmental/national use. The Mexican flag, is similarly protected, it cannot be printed on shirts, or underwear or on guitars like the American flag can. I am not a specialist, but taking these to cases' examples I can imagine a similar train of thought that might lead to protection not necessarily a copyright or I.P. law that restricts the use of such national emblems. Mexican identity is deeply rooted in both catholic(Spanish) and native traditions, national symbols are not so easy to define.
While your experience with Starbucks is apparently different than mine, I fail to see how a company that pays more than minimum wage for essentially minimum wage work ... that also offers benefits (for actual Starbucks owned stores) to all employees after only a few months employment, is "evil" because it "underpays" its workers. Or are you talking about a different company?