Mexico Wants Payment For Aztec Images 325
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?"
Where are the pictures (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely they could have included a picture of the offending cups...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Surely they could have included a picture of the offending cups...
Then they'd have to pay too!
Re: (Score:2)
fair use
Does that apply in Mexico?
As evidence for the oddity of their beliefs regarding copyright, I need only direct you to the situation that resulted in this mess in the first place.
Re:Where are the pictures (Score:4, Insightful)
Did anybody tell the US government that?
Re:yes it applies (Score:4, Insightful)
***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.
Copyright or "cultural heritage"? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Russia only gets royalties for bear pictures (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But if you kill everyone in a culture, you can claim it?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh hell, we should all be paying Africans for the use of their genes starting from the Australopithecus Lucy. Or maybe the chimps since they are our closest relative and we share 95% of their genes. They could compensate us with...err....bananas. Anyhow, don't we already pay Monkey Boy enough...uh...how'd he get in there....
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait until Japan demands payment for all of those Kanji tattoos.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's a fad I didn't even get, honestly. Especially when people who can't read Kanji have them done. For all they know they could run around with a Mitsubishi ad tatooed on their back and they wouldn't even know.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That is very different. You're still able to make champagne, you just can't CALL it champagne. It's an agreement to keep things clear. It's no different than US regulations on what can and can't be called bourbon. Or Bordeaux wine. It's simply specifying exactly what can be called what -- down to where it's made. It's not stopping anyone from making something exactly the same somewhere else, or something slightly different. Just have to call it something else.
If Mexico's indeed claiming any image of
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's going to come as news to Mumm, as their Cuvee Napa is going to have some problems. There are endless `methode champagnoise' wines made, in California, New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere. You just can't call them champagne. Similarly, you can't call US-style whiskies Bourbon unless they're made in Bourbon (much to Jack Daniels' rue), Scotch-style whiskies Scotch unless they're made in Scotlan
Re: (Score:2)
and so began the field of Unintellectual Property law
I know this one, I know this one! Pick me! (Score:2)
The answer is . . . No?
If this is the case, then sweat damn are all the states of the old Confederacy gonna make some serious Union dollars.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope, we'll pay all the royalties for all the Civil War movies in Confederate cash only.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Confederate cash is rare and a century and a half old. It's worth a fortune.
In some cases, yes, but its current market value is not in any way proportional to its face value:
$500 [ebay.com]
$5 [ebay.com]
Actually (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, that's a horse of a different color, then. Although I can't seem to find mention of it in the (very brief) linked article. Do you have a more detailed report?
What. (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:What. (Score:5, Funny)
But without copyright, those unnamed artists of millennia past might not have the motive or means to produce anything. I know if I'm an ancient artist, the first thing on my mind is how I'm going to feed the civilization that murders and conquers my own civilization hundreds of years after my death.
what is really about? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.cnmh.inah.gob.mx/ponencias/630.html [inah.gob.mx]
it is the "La Ley Federal sobre Monumentos y Zonas Arqueológicos, Artísticos e Históricos"
(federal law for monuments and archeological , artistics and historic sites)
It has the purpose of protect the national heritage. And what it is asking is a fee for taking the photographs for comercial use, stating what use would you give to it. It is no very high, and nowhere it goe to the amount if it
Re: (Score:2)
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.
You forget, there is a government involved; inventing new baseless ways to money grab is their speciality.
Realistically, Starbucks should see if the cost of mugs plus fee less what they expect to get from the sale of the mugs is less than the cost of the mugs. If it is, pay the fee to minimize your loss. While I don't agree with the whole we own all images of our cultural heritage argument; since Starbucks does business in Mexico a fight would probably cost them more in teh long run.
Amazing (Score:5, Funny)
Just give a senator some trips to Cabo San Lucas (Score:2)
And we will have the Sunny Aztec copyrith extension act. Now, copyright will last at least from 1923 until next decade. That is from when Disney and other media houses started recording movies and music. Today that means 100 years. In a billion years, copyight will have been extended to 1 billion and 100 years. If the mexicans want in on the game, they will have to pay some lawmaker.
This is great (Score:2)
The copyright, trademark, and patent insanity will only stop once everyone is negatively impacted. It's got to get (much) worse before it will get better.
You think that is bad? (Score:4, Funny)
copyright may very well apply (Score:2, Insightful)
Starbuck's work is likely either a photograph, or a work derived
from a photograph. The photo is likely copyrighted, or restricted.
When you visit an architelogical site, your personal photos are
for personal use only -- not commercial reproduction accoring to
the law of Mexico. It's been this way for quite some time (70's?).
When you do apply for reproduction rights, it's usually limited
to specific publications with a nominal fee per object represented.
These laws were put in place quite early, perhaps before
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, what an amazing evolution of Western culture, i.e., a way to make money off dead people. And all the lawyers needed to defend this income stream get rewarded also. As well as the pols who get to piss off the new income. What people will do for sex is weird, what people will do for money is downright alien.
So they can give it to the tribes, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Native Mexicans are not organized in tribes. Most Mexicans are descendants of Mexicas, even people in the government. In Central America, the genocide was not complete.
Anyhow, RTFA, it's not about that.
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: (Score:2)
Just be glad they didn't think about demanding payment for the use of the number zero....
Zero was invented in India (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, IIRC the Arabic number system had it's origin in India. There was an excellent BBC program [open2.net] on the history of mathematics which showed some early examples.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. So shove that in the face of the next Arab who starts waxing rhapsodic on their great culture. Everything that bears their name came from India, and India, after a rough patch, is still a center of technical brilliance, and the Arab states are still sandy hellholes.
You are sounding a bit like the father in a certain BBC comedy program [youtube.com].
FWIW that history of maths program does discuss the evolution of algebra and its origins in the middle east.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
... However, the Vedic knowledge was in its day a library about every type of field, including manuals on how to pilot aircrafts and make the fuel. However, the records are sadly too obtuse / derived orally from other sources, so are not really practical in its present shape. However, just the fact they have these records, signify this is not the first time earth have had technically advanced civilisations, even though the original records about them have been lost...
The fundamental problem was that India out sourced all its tech support to the Arabs and manufacturing to the Greeks in those Vedic times and switched from manufacturing economy to service economy. Thus it eventually lost its technological edge and then its military edge and then eventually petered out. All it had left was those manuals.
How to resolve the US Deficit... (Score:2)
Just pay the US royalties on blue jeans
Re: (Score:2)
Which are made from denim ("de Nîmes" = from Nîmes in southern France) and cut according to genuese fashion (thus "Jeans" = "Genuans").
Copyright or trademark? (Score:2)
I think trademark would be more fitting intellectual property here.
And can a government assert trademark rights over things it didn't create? Can a government assert trademark rights over things that are marks of a people that existed prior to them? Can a government assert trademarks at all?
This just sound like more government corruption to me.
Re: (Score:2)
It can. Because most of the things it asserts trademark rights on are created as Work for Hire for the government (e.g. the rulers of the tribes/chiefdoms/kingdoms/empires of the time). Most countries I know of have special laws governing the usage of the cultural heritage. Just because the U.S. for a long was not really interested in anything created on U.S. soil that predates Copyright law and thus didn't fall under its protection does not mean that other countries might not see things differently.
Property of the nation. (Score:5, Informative)
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 [cofemer.gob.mx]
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/ [inah.gob.mx]
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, well, if there is a law involved, that makes it okay then. There is a Seinfeld episode where George is going to a chiropractor and he had to cancel an appt. They charged him because he canceled within the 48 hour limit specified in their policy. Later on, the chiropractor had to cancel whereupon George attempted to charge the chiropractor because he now had a policy. There's much truth in that episode.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
All this has received a ridiculous amount of publicity..
White House must pay the Greek government (Score:2)
hmmm (Score:2)
I agree (Score:2, Funny)
This being said, I am still waiting when I can publish my, adult only, Mickey Mouse movie : "On Santa's knees".
Where have I heard this before? (Score:2)
Could it be on Slashdot [slashdot.org]? Yeah, that's the ticket, Egypt tried to copyright the pyramids [nationalgeographic.com] and the sphinx no less. I haven't heard anything else about it, but I'm pretty sure that answer was "how about no".
CS? (Score:2)
Here you go.
http://images.google.com.hk/images?q=de_aztec&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi [google.com.hk]
Appropriate Response! (Score:2)
Hundreds of year? Yes! (Score:2)
Copyright gets extended every time it's about to hit the expiration limit so yes, copyright will last hundreds of years a century from now.
Why the fuck is this story in idle ? (Score:2)
its a valid copyright/patent issue.
if copyright lobby can extend the copyright period by 90 years, why a government shouldnt be able to extend any copyright 500 years ?
Here We Go Again (Score:2)
Wouldn't the Aztecs own the rights to their images rather than the government of Mexico. Aren't the tribal Aztecs who used these types of art long in their graves? Wasn't it Spanish governments that pounded the Aztec empire into the dust? Should the US government do the same and collect money every time an American Indian's image is used? Oh boy. Now I'm messed up. Aztecs are American Indians. But that is the other kind of American. Do they count?
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Funny)
(or so I heard)
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: (Score:2, Redundant)
Damn, and I was trying to kludge up a car anaology. Hehe.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Most people estimate Mexico's population to be at least 60% mestizo (mixed blood indigenous + European). Wikipedia puts it at 60%-80%. Indigenous people make up ~15%, with the remainder European / Asian / African. Since the Mexican census doesn't count ethnicity, no one knows for sure just how many are mestizo; but either way it's not correct that the culture or government is 'European' run.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Mexico [wikipedia.org]
This means that actually the majority of people in Mexico have line
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. (Score:2)
Mexico is run by the descendants of both the people that killed the natives and the natives.
Your assertion that "The Mexican government is the heir of the Spanish Empire" is so monumentally ignorant that does not deserve any further comment.
Re: (Score:2)
"suing someone who uses imagery from Beowulf."
Hush!
Lawyers read Slashdot too!
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
The wonderful thing about photographs is that when you photograph an object the owner of that object still has it.
So your "We have seen so many treasure stolen that we are trying to protect what it left." is little more than thinly strained bullshit.
they're not taking anything at all.
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:5, Informative)
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 [washingtonexaminer.com]
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.
Different Ideas of Intellectual Property (Score:5, Informative)
Copyright out of hand (Score:2)
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.
What you have here is an evil coffee company that underpays its workers vs a corrupt government that is gold digging instead of promot
Re:Copyright out of hand (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's like the British government suing anyone who does things based on William Shakespeare because he was English.
Please stop giving them ideas, they are bad enough already.
Re: (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.
Starbucks is in trouble (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Death certificate? (Score:2)
In most countries which have copyright laws it extends only 50 or so years after the author dies.
Perhaps that's the point. No one has produced the Aztec death certificate of the original artist so he/she might still be alive :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Surely it would have been good marketing for Starbucks to have dropped Mexico a load of money for the upkeep of these historic sites.
It seems that they did approach the Mexicans over the rights to use the images but then went ahead with the project before getting a reply.
Pieces of artwork are covered under different laws to basic copyright. eg. Try selling copies of the Mona Lisa without The Louvre getting on your case about it.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Informative)
Clearly, he meant something else.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the USA though. They're not run like civilized countries in the rest of the world ... so if Starbucks wants to do business there, they'll have to play by the rules. And, knowing USA, Starbucks' problems can all go away if they grease the right palms.
What country can this not apply to?
Yeah sure. (Score:3, Insightful)
Civilized countries invade other countries based on blatant lies, kill thousands of people, imprison people without trial in places that they acquired by force from weaker countries.
Shall I continue?
Nope, unnecessary.
I have many other examples of countries that call themselves "civilized" who are partners of Mexico in the G20 or the OECD, but it would be as pointless as not considering Mexico a civilized place (as a matter of fact there is no country that is not civilized strictly speaking, since all human
Re: (Score:2)
You don't think the RIAA is taking notes? I fully expect the massacre of virgins to begin next week.
(Run, Slashdotters, run!)
Re:Did the Aztec have a concept of copyright? (Score:5, Informative)
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...
Re:Did the Aztec have a concept of copyright? (Score:5, Funny)
Acording to the aztec, their Tlatoani Ahuizotl, persoally killed 84,400 prisioners in four days using a stone knife...
For copyright violations? Harsh...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Acording to the aztec, their Tlatoani Ahuizotl, persoally killed 84,400 prisioners in four days using a stone knife...
That means he would have killed prisoner every 4 seconds for four days, non-stop. I go out on a limb and say that it's pretty safe to assume that the number is a bit on the high side.
Re: (Score:2)
A few thoughts . . .
1. The Aztecs were the ones prone to reporting the high numbers. Kinda disturbing when you think about it. More important, it proves the sacrifice story wasn't just a sort of blood libel.
I won't say that it isn't possible that self-reporting yielded bad data. But, it says a great deal about the Aztecs that they bragged about doing this.
2. I'm not certain why a comparison to the Nazis' methods is meaningful. By that standard, reports of deaths in every major battle in history are wr
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
The RIAA's behavior demonstrates that copyright has nothing to do with remunerating the original authors.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The RIAA's behavior demonstrates that copyright has nothing to do with remunerating the original authors.
Nothing much new here. The original copyright laws, more than a thousand years back, dealt with copying by scribes, and the authors of the documents (the Bible, Koran, etc) had been dead for centuries.
Copyright has always been about control of sales, to limit the profit to a small number of officially-approved publishers. The main difference is that now, the approved publishers are determined by the own
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I get what you mean, but I wouldn't have thought that drawing inspiration from somewhere requires paying the source.
;)
If so, I think Europe can sue Disney for most of their older movies, as well as for inspiring Sleeping Beauty's Castle [wikipedia.org]...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is looney, that anybody thinks that the murders of a ppl should profit from them. I wonder if the Aztec gods can strike dead those that came up with that idea.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think it's a copyright issue really.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, the Aztecs worshiped Disney characters. The Mexican government should be paying Disney.