Thai Government Wants To Copyright Muay Thai
from the not-this-again dept
Over the past few years, we’ve seen a disturbing trend whereby various countries (many of whom have been pressured to put in place intellectual property laws to appease the US) suddenly start putting intellectual property protections over foods or culturally significant items. For example, there was Lebanon’s attempt to “copyright” hummus, Malaysia’s attempt to “copyright” popular dishes like Nasi Lamak, and Kenya’s recent attempt to “copyright” a traditional bag. Of course, none of these are really “copyrights” in the traditional sense. They’re all attempts to use the basic bastardized concept of intellectual property to try to control a piece of cultural heritage.
It appears that Thailand is jumping into this realm as well. thai101 points us to a story of the Thai government “protecting” 25 forms of “traditional arts, wisdom and folklore” via a form of intellectual property protection. Also included? The recently quite popular (in the West) martial art of Muay Thai. Generally these attempts to “protect” such national artforms or foods don’t really mean much from a practical standpoint, but it does show how convincing the world that a concept like “intellectual property” is a good thing can lead them to start looking to lock up all sorts of stuff.
Comments on “Thai Government Wants To Copyright Muay Thai”
When's the last time...
you had a nice, big, steamin’ bowl of Wolf Brand chili?
Feta Cheese
Here in Europe, the Greece government successfully trademarked the name “Feta” – as in Feta cheese, so that only Feta cheese made in greece is allowed to be branded as Feta.
Ironically, Denmark (where I live) was the biggest exporter of Feta cheese, but was now forced to call it “Salad Cheese”.
Re: Feta Cheese
Isn’t that a “DoC” (Denomination d’origin Controlé), rather than strictly a trademark? That’s another tentacle of the IP octopus.
Many cultures worry about saturation of American ideas and their response is to further shackle themselves?
This is getting out of hand...
I can see it now
China copyrights Kung Fu
Brazil copyrights Capoiera
France copyrights Fencing
US and Greece argue over the copyrights to wrestling (ending with them settling that US gets wrestling and Greece gets Greco-Roman wrestling).
and lastly (and I’m sure this is a sign of the Apocolypse….)
Japan copyright Ninjas…
Don’t forget about the people trying to copyright yoga too. Different name, same concept.
Re: Re:
And refreshingly, the Indian goverment is attempting to prevent that using prior art:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100713/09445210190.shtml
Why not Mai Tai?
as kosh of babylon 5 will say
…
and so it begins…
You see yet where copyright is heading?
free trade except by copyright control
SEE how its unfolding….
If anyone tries to enforce this copyright, I’ll punch them in the face.
Oh, wait, that would be infringing.
So – they just copyright everything and get on with the work of impossible enforcement, lol.
Maybe now...
…India can copyright Yoga.
I work in the Fitness industry, so I could see how damaging that would be to us. On the otherhand anything that screws Bikram Choudhury’s ridiculous attempts to copyright Yoga poses might be considered two wrongs making a right.
China doesn't need to copyright Gongfu -
instead they could put a nice little copyright on, e g, paper, including the kind that we use to wipe or nether regions after defecation. Imagine those MPAA and RIAA biggies having to shell out each time ; perhaps they’d worry less about so-called «pirate» versions of films being sold in Beijing and Shanghai….
Henri
What are they aiming for here?
Is this a trademark thing, like a name, or are they going for the acutal techniques themselves.