In the wake of my exercises in plunder and mockery, David Harlow of HealthBlawg is doing his part to restore the institutional respectability of Blawg Review in the most effective manner possible: by hosting a thorough and informative (and yes, entertaining) new edition: Blawg Review #154.
Well worth a visit -- and Good For You, too!
Avast! ye law-lubbing swab!
Passed the Bar-nacle Exam, have ye?
Familiarized yerself wi' Davey Jones' Res Ipsa Loquitur, ye say?
Sailed the Chapter Seven Bankrupt Seas, even?
Schooled y'are in yer directions, an' knows the diff'rence between yer Tort and yer Starbucks?
Ye've got yer compass, and ye habeas yer corpus, an' ye carry yer non compos mentis in a waterproof Shelley's case, ye tell me?
And are ye prepared to sign the ship's Articles an' sail wi' the likes of us . . . in Perpetuity? Well, ye can't: thar's a Rule against it, ain't there? [Har har]
But tell me true now: It be Blawg Review ye've really come seekin', eh? Thought as much.
Well, yer appeal's been heard and ye've come to the proper place. And properly warned ye be, sez I.
But here ye'll find no more o' yer namby-pamby "Blawg Review," savvy?
No, matey, that be fer the lace and waistcoat gentry, an' the lords o' the Admiralty an' such-like luckless landlocked lumpers, wi' their clerks an' their cubicles an' their quills an' their copiers.
No, me hearty: for the likes o' us -- bold 'n' dangerous sorts that we be, don'cha know -- hencefor'rd this be . . .
But enough of these Saturday matinée accents.
Welcome, readers, to Blawg Review #153, the 153rd Edition of the traveling 
"blog carnival for everyone interested in law."
This marks the third year that it has been my pleasure to host Blawg Review at Decs&Excs, and I welcome new and returning readers aboard my humble vessel as we set a random course through the inlets and archipelagos of recent posts relating to the law or originating with lawyers.
And now, let us be about the piratical business at hand -- or "at hook", as the case may be.
Our theme and the breadth of coverage for which Blawg Review stands compel us to begin with a topic otherwise rarely seen on this weblog: criminal law. We have no posts to link actually involving pirates, in the traditional non-intellectual property sense, but we can present a selection of items dealing with more shorebound offenses.
The major development of the week was the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Medellin v. Texas, which has been portrayed as a significant rebuff to the Bush administration and the administration's strange bedfellow, the International Court of Justice. Ken Lammers' CrimLaw post provides one of the most compact summaries of the decision that I have seen:
The International Court of Justice can demand new trials for foreign citizens in the US who weren't told they could contact their embassy or consulate. President Bush can order that States will comply with the ICJ.
However, the States don't have to pay any attention to either of them. The part of the Vienna Convention which the ICJ and President tried to enforce is not self enforcing. In other words, when the treaty was approved by the Senate and signed by the President it did not state that it would become law within the signatory countries. Therefore, in order for the treaty to have force of law within the U.S. the Congress had to pass a law enforcing it.
Posts on the case number in the hundreds. Here is a random selection:
Kent Scheidegger of Crime and Consequences writes, "Despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth . . ., the holding is not all that remarkable."
SCOTUSBlog reported the decision, then offered commentary here, and here.
Howard Bashman's How Appealing also provided a lengthy compilation of reactions.
Volokh Conspiracy member Ilya Somin was another who offered Reflections on Medellin -- "yet another nail in the coffin of the Bush Administration's claims that the executive has virtually unlimited power over foreign affairs" -- concluding that the Court is probably correct to have ruled in favor of the State of Texas, but that Texas still behaved rather badly in the whole affair.
Other criminal posts of note:
On the South Carolina Appellate Law Blog, Bill Watkins is concerned that the Supreme Court "has made trial practice for the ordinary lawyer much more difficult" by restricting trial judges' discretion in ruling on the race-neutrality of challenges to potential jurors.
And from the Innocence Project blog, a central question: "How many innocent behind bars? Nobody knows."
Now, favorable winds drive us on to the sort of insurance, tort and liability issues that most commonly concern this site.
Wind and water are constant concerns of the buccaneer -- and of insurance companies, as Ted Frank pointed out at Point of Law.com: "Are Insurance Companies Getting Hosed in the Wind vs. Water Controversy?".
The Drug and Device Law blog reports a troubling collision of product liability and employment law-- Big Pharma vs. Big Labor? -- in which it is apparently not a firing offense to manipulate drug testing results.
Adam Liptak's NY Times piece on foreign countries' view of the American fondness for punitive damages -- in a nutshell, it adds to the impression that we are a scary and unstable nation -- drew links and comment from many blawgs, including Dan Hull at What About Clients?, Erik Turkewitz on his New York Personal Injury Law Blog, and Dan Markel of the collective PrawfsBlawg.
Extra points for synergy: Carolyn Elefant manages to combine the Medellin and punitive damage threads in a single post at Legal Blog Watch as examples of Globalization of Law Practice, In Ways We Don't Expect.
Curt Cutting of the exemplary California Punitive Damages blog posts a link to Video Clips from Hearings on a Bill to Cap Punitive Damages, for one simple reason:
Yes, this is somewhat old news, but hey, it isn't often that we can link to a video about punitive damages.
So stipulated.
Earlier in the week and also on the CalPuniBlog, which is covering all the bases on its topic of choice, Lisa Perrochet reported on a potential punitive damage award against "celebrity" Kid Rock -- who in some ways resembles a pirate, I suppose. Some lawyers will post anything to increase their blog traffic.
Cal Biz Lit's Bruce Nye yearns for the Bad Old (Pre-Prop 64) Days. Well, not really. Click through to read the story of a most terrible misrepresentation, which the plaintiff never actually heard, which did him no harm, and which he nonetheless chose to use as the basis for a "deceptive practices" claim anyway. This was not a successful gambit on his part. Bruce's post includes bonus mambo content, should you care for that sort of thing.
The Constitution is the unquestioned law of the land and the Captain is the unquestioned Authority on his ship, and for advocates of the "unitary executive" theory the President of the United States ("the Decider") holds comparable Constitutional authority to command, well, just about everything. So why is it, asks Marty Lederman at Balkinization, that when it comes to the awesome powers of the Federal Reserve even the present administration is suddenly awash with "Fair-Weather Unitarians?"
While we are on the trail of "fixing" the investment and capital markets, Professor Bainbridge adopted a cool-eyed and skeptical view of Senator Obama's big financial regulation speech.
Senator Obama has been taking some heat recently for associating with his controversial pastor of choice, but Presidential candidates have overcome far worse companions in the past. Below is an eyewitness portrait of future President Andrew Jackson (at right) consorting most amiably with Jean Lafitte (left), the notorious Pirate of the Gulf:
In other Constitutional posts we return to Howard Bashman, who noted yet again that "free speech" is still an evolving concept and that, at least in the State of Vermont, the right of privacy is in the air.
Pirates are not, as a rule, the most reasonable of men. Victoria Pynchon's Settle It Now Negotiation Blog poses a serious -- sometimes deadly serious -- question of related interest: How Do You Negotiate with a Sociopath? The simple answer is "don't," but there is much more to her post. The post includes bonus Sopranos content, should you care for that sort of thing.
Speaking of settlement, Scott Greenfield's Simple Justice advised that Settlement Demands Have Their Risks -- specifically the risk of a conviction for misdemeanor extortion, as happened to an overzealous young lawyer in New Hampshire. Scott's follow-up, with reflections on the non-lawyer public's frequentand vocal distaste for we legal professionals, is here.
If only from watching too much television, we are all familiar with the institution of the "teaching hospital," an institution devoted as much to the hands-on education of upcoming physicians as it is to healing the sick. At Concurring Opinions, Deven Desai proposes a thought experiment and asks: "Why Not A Teaching Law Firm?"
Pirates are wary of authority, and solo and small-firm lawyers (such as your host) often carry an innate suspicion of or distaste for BigLaw institutions. But even those unfortunate enough to have to man the oars of a large law firm can benefit from blogging, as Kevin O'Keefe [Real Lawyers Have Blogs] reports in his latest survey of the State of the AmLaw 200 blogosphere.
At Law21, Jordan Furlong suspects some large firms of manipulation of "Best Employers to Work For" lists as they seek an edge in misleading to their doom hiring the most promising young lawyers.
And there we have it: the piratical Blawg Review #153. But you know and I know that it is a truth universally acknowledged that No Pirate Story Ends With Just One Episode! So there must be more, must there not? And indeed there will be, albeit without the pirates, because tomorrow is April 1, which can only mean the appearance of a differently-themed Bonus Edition of Blawg Review at my other bloggy establishment, the freely associating and culture-oriented a fool in the forest.
[UPDATE (040108): Here is a link to the April Fool's Blawg Review Appendix 2008.]
Until tomorrow, here's wishing you fair winds, safe harbors and ample booty. It has been a pleasure doing justice with you.
~~~
Blawg Review has information about next week's host, and instructions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.
~~~
Illustrations from divers public domain works (i.e., not themselves pirated) via Project Gutenberg, in particular:
Gloria Teasdale: I thought you left.
Chicolini: Oh no. I don't leave.
Gloria Teasdale: But I saw you with my own eyes.
Chicolini: Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?
-- from Duck Soup (The Marx Brothers, 1933)
In an article in Insurance Journal, investigator Brad Ballentine discloses the hitherto unsuspected similarities between insurance fraud and stage magic:
One trick that magicians often rely upon is the tendency we all have to assume things. They very often use props of objects we are all familiar with, so that when we see the prop, we assume it is the genuine article. For instance, the magician pulls out an egg, and we subconsciously assume it is an actual egg, and not a hollow plastic shell, or he presents you with a deck of cards and we subconsciously assume that it is a genuine deck of cards and not a trick deck. Most people seeing a scarf or handkerchief might unwittingly assume it to be nothing more than that, instead of realizing that two scarves of the same color, stitched together on three sides, still looks like a single scarf, but makes a nice pouch in which to hide things (like a hollow, plastic egg).
Similarly, in the world of insurance claims, we are constantly being presented with something that looks like the genuine article, and thus, our tendency is to assume that it is. A report about injuries and treatment written on a doctor's letterhead causes us to assume that there was an actual patient, that there was an injury, that there actually was some treatment and there actually was a doctor who was in some way involved with that report . . . .
Via the always interesting Law and Magic Blog, which is about exactly that.
". . . . Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season."
-- T.S. Eliot, "Gerontion" (1920)
In August, this weblog will be five years old. I do not know what the proper formula is for converting Human Years to Blog Years, but I sense that this sort of longevity makes Decs&Excs authentically middle aged, if not yet exactly a grizzled old timer. And like many another aging hipster, Decs&Excs has been slowing down. Since hosting the 102nd Edition of Blawg Review here last April, I have generated a mere 21 new posts of my own, barely enough for any weblog worthy of the name.
Next Monday, March 31, it will be my pleasure for the third time to host an edition of Blawg Review, the 153rd. (It is never too early, by the way, to submit suggestions for inclusion in that compendious portmanteau of a post via the handy submission form.) It remains to be seen whether that will inspire a return to a more frequent cycle of posting here.
I will confess that some part of my slowdown may result from my being utterly intimidated by the undisputed Big Dog of the insurance coverage weblogging world, David Rossmiller's Insurance Coverage Blog. David has pretty much owned the coverage of coverage over the past year or so, particularly the post-hurricane litigation in Louisiana and Mississippi and the spectacular fall from dubious grace of Dickie Scruggs and company. While maintaining his own weblog at a consistently high level of quantity and quality, he has also found time to guestblog at PointofLaw.com and to serve on the advisory board for the burgeoning Lexis/Nexis Insurance Law Center. I take it as a given that he somehow manages to render good service to his clients while he's at it.
For lawyers with weblogs, and particularly for lawyers thinking of starting a weblog, there's inspiration to be had in a post Mr. R. contributed to the Insurance Law Center earlier this month with the exclamatory title, "People: Throw Off Your Shackles and Blog!" After adding his name to the long list of those who have despaired at the sheer gosh-awfulness of so much of the writing produced by lawyers-as-lawyers, he posits blogging as a promising cure:
This is what lawyers all too easily lose sight of when writing – that the goal is not to show how smart they are, or even to win. The goal is to communicate with the reader. All other aims must be secondary, because these goals stand the best chance of being realized if the primary goal is first achieved. The reader’s needs must always come first, before any of the writer’s needs. The writer must work hard, so the reader does not need to. Blogging can be a great place for lawyers to discover how to do this, to break free of the iron claw of Latin and dead English, to use creative language, to employ metaphor, simile, allegory, and character development, to discover the storyteller within, to really connect with the reader. Even judges and other lawyers, so they say, are human. Given a choice between analysis that plods along like a mastodon on crutches and analysis that is both insightful and entertaining, the market will choose the more attractive product.
I wholeheartedly agree, but would add that there is potentially even more benefit to be derived by lawyers blogging about something other than the law. The practice of law does not take place in a vacuum, but in a vast and multifarious Real World full of fellow human beings and of social, economic, political, natural, and cultural tidal forces, and the practice can only gain from the attorney's engagement with that larger context. Also, writing about All That Other Stuff is frequently just more fun than writing about the law. So, while there is undoubtedly ample room for additional well-written law blogs, there is even more room in this world for well-written, lively non-law blogs from well-rounded, lively lawyers. Heed the call!
~~~
P.S., Blawg Review #152 is now up at TechnoLawyer Blog, which despite its name is not a blog for lawyers who love Techno. Say, there's a niche for someone to fill.....
Lloyd's of London, not Starbuck's, is almost certainly history's most important coffee house, and the Lloyd's markets are justifiably famous for their ability to place insurance coverage for unusual risks, as exemplified by this list of 9 Odd Things Insured by Lloyd's of London. (Look! Elephants!)
Like a bespoke suit, a "bespoke policy" of Lloyd's insurance is a sign that a certain height of celebrity has been achieved by its holder. The latest example is Lloyd's providing insurance for a winemaker's nose and sense of smell for €5 million ($7.8 million). The insured is Ilja Gort, the Dutch owner of Chateau de la Garde in Bordeaux, and his is hardly the first olfactory instrument so insured. Per the Lloyd's press release:
[N]ose insurance is not just restricted to wine buffs. It is a common purchase for a range of occupations, and Watkins Syndicates is currently working on a policy with a US perfume consultant who develops new fragrances for perfume houses.
[Underwriter Jonathan] Thomas explains: 'You have a limited number of people who need to insure their nose to [Gort’s] extent. But few people realise just how important their nose is to their job. Look at the wine, perfume and food trades – a loss of sense of smell has a huge effect on their roles.
'The most famous nose to insure was that belonging to [sherry maker] Jose Ignacios Domecq. Not only did he have a very distinct sense of smell for sherry, he also had a very distinct nose. Mr Gort is following in a fine tradition.'
In fact Domecq was known as El Nariz, ‘the Nose’. He earned this name for literal as well as figurative reasons – his hawk-like nose was memorably large.
[Mr. Thomas needs to brush up on his American entertainers, however: he refers to proboscally-unchallenged Lloyd's-insured singer-comedian Jimmy Durante as "Snozzle Durantee." No respect for the classics, these underwriters.]
As noted by Patrick Collinson of The Guardian, "The more eccentric policies - on celebrity posteriors, fingers and noses - are . . . virtually all publicity stunts."
Celebrity-related coverages can, however, serve a genuine function to protect those who are dependent for their livelihood on the continuing well-being of a prominent person. In cases of that sort, Lloyd's celebrity policies qualify as one of the more specialized forms of "key man" insurance. "Tiger Woods’ caddy, . . . has a policy to protect against his master’s early death," and Las Vegas magicians Siegfried & Roy, who carried Lloyd's policies on one another, actually collected when Roy was badly mauled onstage by one of the team's white tigers.
One has to be sure, with policies like these, that the beneficiary has an actual insurable interest and will suffer a genuine loss should anything untoward happen to the insured party. Otherwise, there are certain negative externalities created, as Collinson observes:
[T]he Victorians had a nice line in gambling on unconnected people's deaths until it was outlawed in the early 1900s. It produced rather too many incentives to bump people off.
~~~
Illustration: The prominent sniffer above is neither Domecq's nor Durante's, but is the official mascot of the annual (and highly recommended) International Pinot Noir Celebration, in McMinnville, Oregon.
I have not maintained a membership in the Los Angeles County Bar Association for a decade or so, but I remain on some of the Association's email distribution lists. This morning, I received notice of an upcoming seminar revisiting -- oh, when will our generation just let it go? -- the Kennedy assassination and the Warren Commission report.
The session is being sponsored by, and my name has apparently been added specifically to the distribution list of, the Association's Senior Lawyers Section -- of which I have never been a member, although on review of the Section by-laws I find that I satisfy one, and only one, of its membership qualifications, being as I am "either (a) over the age of fifty-five (55) or (b) [have] been admitted to practice for twenty-five (25) years or more."
Being slotted in as a "senior lawyer" is, frankly, somewhat irritating, though not so annoying as the constant stream of mailings these past few years urging me to join AARP. Sorry, folks: I like to burden future generations as much as the next fellow, but I am no Retired Person, and I do not expect to be so for quite a while yet. Begone! Get thee behind me, discounts!
But I digress. What I actually intended to remark on is this:
If the Senior Lawyers Section really wants to attract new members, it should perhaps consider redesigning its Official Seal which, in the interest of letting it serve as punctuation and punchline, I have hidden away below the fold. Click through and see!
Los Angeles is better known for tight abs and botox than it is for tuxes and bow ties -- but we were supposed to have had a truly Enormous sculptured bow tie to festoon a space in front of the Disney Hall. To be created by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen, "Collar and Bow" was to have been erected in 2004 and was to have looked something like this:
In July of 2006, when I wrote about it here, the project was well behind schedule and plagued by technical difficulties. Today, that space in front of the Hall remains unoccupied and pedestrians can still pass without fear of being crushed by falling neckwear. The Tie exists, but it rests in a storage yard in Irvine and looks like this:
The Tie in Exile -- Los Angeles Times photo by Don Bartletti
In the past year, as reported on the front page of today's Los Angeles Times, "Collar and Bow" has gone from highly public art work to the subject of a highly public lawsuit against the artists, designers and fabricators involved in its making and unmaking:
The damages, Music Center attorney David Lira said this week, come to more than $6 million, including payments for the sculpture, additional money for consultants and $600,000 that the Music Center plowed fruitlessly into reinforcing the sidewalk in front of the Frank Gehry-designed hall at 1st Street and Grand Avenue so the ground could support the heavy steel objects that never arrived.
Like the Tower of Babel and other unfinished works, "Collar and Bow" may simply have been Too Big, its creators' ambitions outstripping their ability to deliver it into the real world:
The sculpture was conceived a decade before Disney Hall's 2003 opening. Oldenburg and Van Bruggen had been toying with the idea of a giant bow tie, and their friend Gehry thought that a swanky collar and tie, looking as if they had been tossed on the sidewalk by some colossus, would sound a playfully artful keynote for concertgoers and passersby.
The architect suggested increasing the sculptors' initial 35-foot-high design to 65 feet. In May 2003, the Music Center contracted with Oldenburg and Van Bruggen's company, Storebridge, to create "Collar and Bow" for $2.2 million and deliver it by Aug. 15, 2004. Donations of $1.85 million from Music Center patrons Richard and Geri Brawerman and $1 million from the J. Paul Getty Trust were expected to cover the cost.
The illustration at the top of this post of the sculpture in place comes from the website of one of the defendants, Westerly Marine, which provides this description of its fabrication:
The monumental artwork is made of aluminum, structural steel, stainless steel, then bonded with epoxy film, vacuum bagged and cured. The final finish will be painted with polyurethane enamel.
Although he was instrumental in starting the project and in expanding it to its gargantuan final scale, Frank Gehry is not a party to the "Collar and Bow" litigation. He is, however, the target of a lawsuit on the other side of the country, relating to MIT's allegedly leaky Stata Center buildings. The Disney Hall itself has not been without practical problems: one side of the building had to be sandblasted after completion because Gehry's signature highly reflective steel cladding threatened to roast the neighbors.
Filed last February, the "Collar and Bow" case is now scheduled for trial in Los Angeles Superior Court in mid-October.
For a last look at what might have been -- for better or worse -- here is a pristine 1:16 scale model of the work that was on offer in 2007 at London's Waddington Galleries:
[Cross-posted to a fool in the forest.]
This just in via Insurance Journal:
Men Charged with Setting Fire to Home of 'Mary' from 'Little Lamb' Poem
Two men are accused of burning down the Sterling, Mass. birthplace of the woman made famous by the nursery rhyme 'Mary Had a Little Lamb.'
* * *.
They are scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday in connection with the Aug. 12 fire that destroyed a vacant house in Sterling where town officials say Mary Elizabeth Sawyer was born in 1806.
Several ladybugs, on hearing the news, were seen to be flying away home. Mary's spokesperson, Thomas A. Edison, could not be reached for comment.
~~~
[Lamb illustration from The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1766).]
Shirley Temple:
Golly gee, Mr. Disney! What are all these little statues for?
Walt Disney:
Well first, Shirley, I need to ask you politely to take your dimpled mitts off of that large statue, because that one's mine. Heh, heh.
But as for those little ones: you and I have been asked to hand these out to the seven legal weblogs that Declarations & Exclusions is nominating for the prestigious title of 2007 Blawg Review of the Year.
As the Anonymous Editor of Blawg Review has explained in the Official Rules, this year's winner will be selected by the votes of all those weblogs that have hosted, or are scheduled to host, one or more editions of Blawg Review. Each host can nominate however many he or she chooses from Blawg Review editions 89 through 140, and the edition receiving the most nominations by January 14, 2008, will be declared the winner.
Shirley Temple:
Jeepers! It's sort of a Blawgers' Choice Award, isn't it, Mr. Disney?
But doesn't Colin Samuels always win in this category?
Walt Disney [nervously]:
Heh, heh. He certainly does, Shirley. But this year when he wins, it'll be the result of free and fair elections -- which, as we all know, makes everything okay.
So, shall we find out who the nominees are?
Shirley Temple:
Let's do it, Mr. Disney! And like I always say, everyone's already a winner when it comes to Blawg Review!
Walt Disney:
You bet, Shirley! So now, here's two-time Blawg Review host George Wallace, the non-anonymous editor of Declarations & Exclusions -- and of its sibling site, a fool in the forest, itself the home to two editions of the April Fool's Blawg Review Prequel -- to announce his nominations for 2007's Blawg Review of the Year.
[Muffled, courteous applause]
George Wallace:
Thank you, Miss Temple. Thank you, Mr. Disney. And thank you, Anonymous Editor of Blawg Review, wherever you are, for overseeing another terrific year of Blawg Review.
I have to admit I have sometimes been remiss this year in reading each edition as it was published, but the invitation to proffer nominations in this category gave me the impetus I needed to go back and visit or revisit every one of the eligible editions. And I must say, it really drove home to me what a profusion of talent, imagination and gumption the legal blogosphere contains. Miss Temple is right: they are all winners already.
[Wild applause]
All right then. The hour grows late and we all want to get to the big Blawg Review afterparty, and some of us probably need to be in court in the morning, so here we go.
[Portentous rumbling from the scary orchestra]
Declarations & Exclusions is proud to nominate, in reverse chronological order, these hosts and their editions of Blawg Review as the best of the best in 2007:
- Colin Samuels for Infamy or Praise: Blawg Review #137, completing his trilogy of editions inspired by Dante's Divina Commedia;
- Eric Turkewitz for New York Personal Injury Law Blog: Blawg Review #134, inspired by the New York Marathon;
- A dual nomination to Diane Levin for Online Guide to Mediation: Blawg Review #130 [northern hemisphere] and, in New Zealand, to Geoff Sharp for mediator blah...blah...: Blawg Review # 130 [southern hemisphere], spanning the globe to bring us the constant variety of legal weblogs;
- Anne Reed for Deliberations: Blawg Review #127, inspired by the jury system and all that it entails;
- George Lenard for George’s Employment Blawg: Blawg Review #124; Labor Day Special Historical Edition, truly a labor of love by a lover of Labor;
- David Gulbransen for his collegial and eleemosynary "Course Guide" edition of Blawg Review #122; and
- Kevin A. Thompson for Cyberlaw Central » Blawg Review #93, a product of the vast Illuminati conspiracy.
Let's congratulate them all, shall we? Thank you and good night!
[5 minute standing ovation, followed by effusive rioting in the streets as the scary orchestra plays on. . . .]
New Horizons in Intellectual Property Law
Lee Rosenbaum's CultureGrrl weblog links an intriguing Guardian report: "Egypt to copyright the pyramids and antiquities":
Egypt is planning to pass a law that would exact royalty payments from anyone found making copies of the country's ancient monuments or museum pieces, including the pyramids.
Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said his country wanted to own the copyright to its historic monuments and would use any money raised to pay for the upkeep of its most prestigious sites.
Hawass, an outspoken figure in the usually cautious world of antiquities, said the law had been agreed by a ministerial committee and would go before parliament, where it was expected to be passed easily. It would then apply anywhere in the world, he said.
* * *
His comments came only a few days after an Egyptian opposition newspaper, Al-Wafd, published a report complaining that many more tourists each year travelled to the pyramid-shaped Luxor hotel in Las Vegas than to Luxor itself. The newspaper proposed that the US hotel should pay some of its profits to Luxor city.
Decs&Excs looks forward to any comment that may be forthcoming from Donn Zaretsky's Art Law Blog.
In the meantime, TIME Magazine's Richard Lacayo offers a precis of architectural copyright and the particular problem posed by structures with Origins Lost in the Mists of Antiquity:
My question: Can you copyright ancient monuments that have no known architect? The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works provides a mechanism to extend protection to the 'authors' of works of architecture. Some sculptural monuments by identifiable artists have copyrights. The Statue of Liberty — by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi — has had one since 1876, ten years before it was dedicated in New York Harbor. And though the Eiffel Tower has been in the public domain for years, its night time image is not. Its decorative electric light display is copyrighted, which effectively copyrights the tower at night, so commercial photographers have to pay a fee to take its picture once the lights are on.
~~~
Cover image of Pyramid Power: The Millennium Science via Earthpulse Press -- where you can still purchase this million-selling 1973 classic that was "decades ahead in presenting many ideas in science which are now embedded into our consciousness."
