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.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
When's the last time...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Feta Cheese
Ironically, Denmark (where I live) was the biggest exporter of Feta cheese, but was now forced to call it "Salad Cheese".
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
This is getting out of hand...
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...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100713/09445210190.shtml
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Feta Cheese
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Oh, wait, that would be infringing.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Maybe now...
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.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
China doesn't need to copyright Gongfu -
[ link to this | view in thread ]
What are they aiming for here?
[ link to this | view in thread ]