Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[mojobadshah]

Let's say I was an American citizen with a Zoroastrian heritage and I wanted to reserve the exclusive right to use well established works original to the Zoroastrian heritage for commercial use such as the concepts of:

1. one God
2. angels
3. the Devil
4. demons
5. the Messiah
6. the incarnate word
7. the existence of a Soul
8. Kingdom of Heaven
9. a Heaven and a Hell in the afterlife contingent upon one's good and bad deeds
10. the Resurrection
11. Judgment Day

All well established influences upon the Abrahamic religions or Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  What kind of problems would I run into?

[MYK]

Laches?

[Oh, Crud]

...  What kind of problems would I run into?

That one of the afore-mentioned deities Mighteth Smiteth Thee With Lightning?

[mojobadshah]

I'm an atheist.  I don't believe in deities.  The concepts I'm speaking of were never before heard of before Zoroasterianism as far as the evidence can show, and later appeared in Abrahamic works when the Jews were living side by side the Zoroastrians.



Superman "a do gooder extraterrestrial with superhuman abilities" was not a concept original to one heritage."  Nor was harry potter " a do gooder human with supernatural abilities." 

Could what I'm talking about pass for an expression?

The literal components I mentioned are original to one heritage.  Copyright law doesn't extend to concepts like these ones, and copyrights expire which does not help either.   So how does one protect their heritage from being exploited?  Those Americans bearing the Zoroastrian heritage just got here so to hell with latching.  The question is how does one protect the few who are right from getting walked all over by the many who are wrong if the law does not?  And don't worry I'm not going to FREAK OUT or anything.  But do I have to worry about the people who are making the laws catering to any of the three aforesaid Abrahamic religions?

[MYK]

Well, as you noted, copyright doesn't really work in this case.  Neither does trademark or patent.  It's not a trade secret;  in fact, it's sort of the opposite of a trade secret inasmuch as they try to pass it along to as many people as possible.  So I don't think there's any grounds for protection in the categories that we have.

The "traditional knowledge" people are trying to "protect" (IMHO, in the sense of "protection racket") things that are sort of similar.  Oh, acai berries are good to eat, well, great, let's force the people marketing them to send money to the tribal council of the people in the area where the berries were originally found, so the tribal leaders can line their pockets with it use it for development projects just like Kim Jong Il does.  Next month, they'll be targeting corn growers for stealing the traditional knowledge of the Aztecs.