Who Owns Einstein? The Battle For the World's Most Famous Face 58
During his lifetime, Einstein resisted the attempts to commercialise his identity. Now someone makes more than $12 million a year on image licensing. Even the law that allows this profiteering is contentious. Can an heir inherit rights that did not yet exist during the originator's lifetime? More on this on a long read from The Guardian.
Probably not the most famous face (Score:2)
I'm betting there are a lot of famous faces that are more widely recognized than Einstein's.
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Which one?
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Technically there is only one. The current queen has always been Elizabeth II. So for example HMS Queen Elizabeth is not named after the current Queen, it would be HMS Queen Elizabeth II if that where the case.
However to answer your question it is Queen Elizabeth II they are referring to. However other polls suggest that Adolf Hitler is the most recognized face.
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Gandhi maybe? Although niche stuff for the intellectual elite on the world stage, India has ~1,4B population and I presume everybody knows him there. Interestingly, Indians seem to be putting more energy into being pissed at Gandhi for not becoming prime minister, than into being thankful for the liberation stuff
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But I can think of one more. Jesus has 2,6B followers. I presume the 2B muslims should also be aware of him, although I'm not sure all of them will recognize a picture of him.
No one would recognize a picture of Jesus. He's usually depicted as an effeminate long-haired white guy, possibly with blue eyes. That's about as probable as him looking like a bald Sinead O'Connor.
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That's about as probable as him looking like a bald Sinead O'Connor.
Well, Luke 1:37 could be loosely translated as "Nothing compares 2U."
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Whether Jesus looks anything like
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If depictions need not be based on reality, Santa Claus is much more recognizable than Jesus.
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I bet Radcliffe as Harry Potter, Ford as Indiana Jones or Han Solo, and Hamill as Luke are also more recognizable.
And talking about jesus is already a depiction not based on reality, so it's 100% fair game to pull in Santa, Waldo, Humpty Dumpty. and Darth Vader as counter-points.
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If we're going to expand this to representations of individuals (since we don't really know what Jesus looked like), then Buddha would probably also qualify. Probably not Muhammad, given Islam's history of iconoclasm.
Queen Elizabeth (jfdavis668's response) seems to be the answer that comes up with a search for "most widely recognized people".
I'd also wonder about some of the really famous actors and actresses of the past half-century.
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I would add Darth Vader.
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But that's just his helmet you recognise not his face.
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The pictures of Jesus are basically art work.
No one really knows how he looked. As no one made a picture of him, when he was still alive.
Re:Probably not the most famous face (Score:4, Insightful)
No one really knows how he looked. As no one made a picture of him, when he was still alive.
Or *if* he lived. We don't really know for sure how much of the Jesus legend is based on a single individual. Many of the Jesus stories can be traced back much earlier, and of course there is no contemporary source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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There are plenty of "contemporary sources", e.g. the notes from the trials ...
No idea why modern pseudo historians want to argue he did no exist - facepalm.
What is next? The emperor who convicted him, Tiberius Augustus, did not exist either?
So the emperor invented a fake riot in Israel and a fake riot leader - oh Jesus was not the riot leader, just "involved" - and all the papers regarding those issues are fake?
What is next? Mohamed did not exist? Because except for mentioning in the Quran/Khoran no one has
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There are plenty of "contemporary sources", e.g. the notes from the trials ...
Huh??? That's not real.
The emperor who convicted him, Tiberius Augustus, did not exist either?
Again, eh? There was no emperor in Jerusalem. You confusing him with the governor, Pontius Pilate?
There are no notes, no records of the trial, just verbal stories written down decades later.
We have the letters of St. Paul, who admits never having met Jesus. The gospels - anonymously authored books written decades later.
I'm not saying Jesus did not exist, just that the evidence is very thin.
You'd agree that Moses and Noah are mythological?
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Again, eh? There was no emperor in Jerusalem.
He actually was. Just 3 or 4 years before the trials.
You confusing him with the governor, Pontius Pilate?
No, I don't. And it is "Pilatus", can't be so har dto write a bit latin. Even if you are an american or a Britt.
We have the letters of St. Paul, who admits never having met Jesus.
No idea. I'm not a christian.
But claiming Jesus did not exist is just completely idiotic.
No idea why people have nothing better to do than attacking history, with no knowledge about
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No need for the usual frothing at the mouth. Jesus probably existed. My point was that the evidence is thin enough that some scholars have made serious arguments against it. And some of your claims are unfounded, going against all mainstream scholarly belief. Try to calm down, and maybe talk to your doctor about increasing your dose.
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Jesus has 2,6B followers. I presume the 2B muslims should also be aware of him, ...
Jesus ("Isa" as anglicized from the authoritative Arabic) is a major figure in Islamic theology.
Islam recognizes a lot of prophets (people whom God talked to directly and who bore the message to some part of humanity). 25 are explicitly mentioned in the Koran and estimates of their number by Islamic scholars exceed 100,000.
Of the 25 prophets explicitly mentioned, Jesus is the most prominent. (The penultimate prophet, the Me
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Karl Marx.
I wonder who is monetizing this image.
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Jesus of Nazareth. At least as the white man that late medieval and early Renaissance painters imagined him to be.
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Jesus of Nazareth. At least as the white man that late medieval and early Renaissance painters imagined him to be.
Eh? Are Jews and Arabs not white? Greeks, Persians? Do you think White starts north of the Alps?
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Anglo-saxon or GTFO is how it worked where I grew up.
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Yes! It's a new MCU character "Hulk Einstein" where he solves relativity problems but has a ginormous head. It'll be on Disney+ in 2023.
Why not? (Score:4, Interesting)
Can an heir inherit rights that did not yet exist during the originator's lifetime?
The originator is dead, so they can't hold those rights. Is it really inheritance? If those rights legally fall to the estate, then it doesn't matter whether they existed at the time of the person's life. A better question is whether a school should be allowed to own an estate in full, if those rights should ever fall to an estate at all, etc.
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The originator is dead, so they can't hold those rights. Is it really inheritance?
Are you suggesting we test the theory of relativity?
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Re: Why not? (Score:3)
Well that is a problem with all copyrights. They keep being expanded unconstitutionally to apply retroactively
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So Dr Suess is the highest earning estate, after Michael Jackson. What makes these kind of estates unique is most creatives sell out, like Lucas films or Bob Dylan did, before death. To have assists in the fa
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Rights OR regulations enshrined by laws can't be applied retroactively. It's like a basic principle. [wikipedia.org]
If they were, one could be imprisoned and or sued for acts legal or unregulated at the time, on account of later law regulating the issue.
BTW, in the case of dead celebrities, laws are mostly non-existent and vastly mismatched.
From TFA:
Prof Roger Schechter from George Washington University Law School describes the law around postmortem publicity rights as "a complete mess".
While Brazil, Canada, France, Germany and Mexico have national laws that specify the definition and duration of postmortem publicity rights, in the US the law varies between states.
Only 24 states have adopted a formal statute on postmortem publicity rights, which can last anywhere from 20 years after a person's death (Virginia) to 100 (Oklahoma, Indiana).
A celebrity who dies in California therefore has different rights to one who dies in New York.
New Jersey, where Einstein died, is one of 17 US states that has placed no limitation on the right of an heir to profit from a dead celebrity's publicity rights - which could allow the Hebrew University to bring legal action against alleged infringers indefinitely.
Oh and for the TLDR crowd - parasitic leeches sucking on Einstein's cremated remains are not even related to him.
It's a university he left his "manuscripts, copyrights, publica
He died in 1955. (Score:4, Informative)
The time to make money on this picture has passed. >67 years have past. The photographer is long dead. Einstein is long dead.
Too often the rights to ancient material ends up in the hands of a large corporation. A big company makes money for an eternity. This is not benefiting small, poor creators.
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On Earth he died in 1955, right now he's out there trolling black holes.
TLDR, But ... (Score:1)
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Don't worry, there are more of these cases out there, like Che Guevara [petapixel.com]
This is why we need copyright reform, period.
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Glad we agree.
Yo-Yo Ma (Score:1)
Stupid question (Score:2)
Einstein died 1955. So: yes a hire can inherit rights.
However the rights to a picture have nothing to do with the hire or the time passed the guy depicted died.
If I photograph you: I have the "copyright".
I can not exercise that right without your consent: because it is YOU on the picture.
If I die, my hire has the right to use the picture for something around 100 years, again, depending on your previous consent.
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You have the right to make copies but you may not have the right to publish those copies.
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Why would you hire someone to inherit your rights? Wouldn't it be much wiser to just let your heir inherit the rights to your estate? 8^)
I assume that auto-correct may have had a hand in your post.
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Well, I probably simply typed it wrong and as heir and hire are both legit english words, none was red underlined :P
Re:Stupid question (Score:4, Informative)
Einstein died 1955. So: yes a hire can inherit rights. However the rights to a picture have nothing to do with the hire or the time passed the guy depicted died.
If I photograph you: I have the "copyright". I can not exercise that right without your consent: because it is YOU on the picture. If I die, my hire has the right to use the picture for something around 100 years, again, depending on your previous consent.
It's not that easy. Speaking under the laws and conventions in the U.S., there are several distinctions, all of which play into what you can do and what you cannot do with a photograph you've taken. Was it in a public or private space? If it was private, were you invited? Did the people in the private setting have the knowledge that they may be photographed? Did they ask you to stop photographing them or did they pose for your photo? Then it comes to what you actually want to do with the photograph. In general, when photographed in public or private setting (invited) you have a right to use the photograph for personal purposes and even publishing it. You can even sell the actual photograph along with the rights to someone else. What you can't do, without their consent, is sell copies of the photograph (unless it's part of a publication) or use it in any way the denotes the subject supports whatever you're implying with its use. This is not a comprehensive paragraph, but you get the gist of it.
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It is not a copyright issue. There is no copyright issue.
But the people claiming the rights to Einstein's image (not photo - general image) HAVE made it into a trademark issue.
He is no longer Einstein but "Albert EinsteinTM".
Before he sold his agency and its roster of "dead legends" to the photo agency Corbis in 2005, Richman persuaded the Hebrew University to file a slew of trademarks for Einstein-related products, which, he argued, would be easier to defend across legal jurisdictions according to established trademark laws.
Soon the university held trademarks for "Albert Einstein" on nearly 200 separate items, including metal detectors, umbrellas, arcade games, Christmas tree decorations, butterfly nets, water-squirting toys and life-size cardboard cutouts.
For Rosenkranz, who continued to deliberate on licensing deals until he moved to southern California and resigned from his position at the university in 2003, the introduction of a trademark symbol was deeply uncomfortable.
"The first time I saw the little 'TM' above his name it really bothered me," he said.
"There's no greater sign of commercialisation or commodification, is there?
But [the lawyers] told me that, you know, this was all really important to guarantee the rights."
With international trademarks, the university could now litigate alleged infringements in countries where there was no posthumous right of publicity.
You should read the article. Also, about slippery slopes. [wikipedia.org]
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If it is a "trade mark issue" then it is probably either:
a) completely right, that the trademark holders defend the trade mark - or -
b) a problem of the trade mark bureau that allowed a trademark on a family name
The later, b), is not uncommon as, we have trademarks on companies like "Schneider" - a now deceases audio/phono company and "Phillips", not so deceases.
Yeah, I should read the article, usually I do that. But the summary was "copyright".
Science Icon (Score:3)
Has anyone tried to bill Slashdot for this?
No (Score:2)
Can an heir inherit rights that did not yet exist during the originator's lifetime?
No. Just no.
Einstein's contribution (Score:1)