Mexico Wants Payment For Aztec Images 325
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the montezuma's-latest-revenge dept.
from the montezuma's-latest-revenge dept.
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?"
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Copyright or "cultural heritage"? (Score:3, Interesting)
But if you kill everyone in a culture, you can claim it?
Re:I've got a stronger claim (Score:2, Interesting)
Mexico is a pretty poor country. I wouldn't object to there being some fund for use of these images for profit in foreign countries provided the money went into some cultural preservation purposes (for maintenance of the ruins or something).
I don't really see it as a copyright issue at all. I would have linked to have read more about the matter than the link above gave.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:3, Interesting)
The article was light on significant details. It looks as if these images are used effectively as trademarks in Mexico, used for purposes of tourism, or some such thing. This is obviously not a copyright issue.
LMAO (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Re:Copyright out of hand (Score:4, Interesting)