This bit of news caught my eye. And gladdened my heart. Major Hollywood studios are finally cracking down on the illegal use of their intellectual property in the creation of unlicensed piñatas! Here’s the story from the LA Times…
Disney and the other companies, in what experts said was an understandable move to protect their popular cartoon and character properties, filed copyright and trademark infringement lawsuits against Santoyo and another nearby shop owner for allegedly selling the counterfeit pinatas.
Although Santoyo settled last month for an undisclosed sum, word of the legal action against these two small Los Angeles vendors — who peddle their wares in an informal pinata district centered along Olympic Boulevard and Central Avenue — has reverberated through the garages, backyards and warehouses of pinata makers as far away as Santa Ana, who worry that they too will be targeted. But will they stop making the images of Cinderella and Dora?
“Without that, we don’t have much of a business,” said South Los Angeles pinata maker Marta Garcia. “We need to be careful, but it’s hard because the demand is for the characters on television and in the theaters.”
While I can certainly sympathize the retailers who just want to earn a living, stealing is stealing. And if Disney isn’t being paid for the use of their characters, this is clear cut theft, that hurts a lot of people from the janitors at Disney’s offices to the creative people who come up with the entertainment we love.
You know… I agree with this
But it really has nothing to do with pinatas, more about copyright infringement
I agree with Matt, in that it really has nothing to do with Pinatas, but I must take the opposite position on the issue of copyright infringement.
I do not wholly agree with your position on pinatas, as again I do not see them as an inherent problem, and to some extent I do agree that I might not let a small child get old school on a pinata with a baseball bat, but at a certain point, consenting adults should be able to break whatever is within their right to do so without social odium.
For example, regarding “College Sex and Drug Piñata Parties,” I think we should remember that many of these students are of age to make their own decisions (and, alas, their own mistakes). While I do not condone the use of controlled substances, we should remember that condoms are useful for hygienic reasons and for preventing unwanted pregnancies. Sex toys also promote a healthy relationship to one’s body and sexuality. If a campus group for promoting safe sex were to use pinatas to further awareness among students about contraception, then I applaud such efforts. Standing ovation.
But, as for the task at hand — use of cultural symbols and imagery is not so simple. Although it is a team of people and a company which might create and distribute a popular character, and certainly receive the lion’s share of the rewards that come from that, I would argue that our cultural icons are not simply the property of one corporate entity. There should be some extent to which society is able to claim ownership of these characters, a principle already present in the law in the concept of “fair use.” Whatever the letter of the law, I think it’s a bit unfair for a major corporation to go shut down a strip of small retailers for using its characters.
The real relationship here, the one being interrupted, is between the customer, the parents of children who want to obliterate effigies of Mickey Mouse, and the merchant, the pinata makers. I say this is a real relationship because it is an exchange in the most basic sense of a person’s labor for payment, at also a social arrangement of exchanging one’s work and creativity (pinata making) with another person who appreciates that work (by destroying it with a baseball bat). To supplant that relationship with the relation between the copyright holder and the small business person, who in any calculation is withholding an immensely small margin of the profits being accrued, is to supplant a real relationship with an un-real one. Intellectual property rights should be used to protect the artisan, not stomp them out of existence by companies with extraordinary influence and ownership over culture.
are you serious? lol… this might just be one of the funniest/ stupid websites i have ever seen… and just in case you didnt know, the only way half the ppl that find this site, have only found it because your on a link of websites made by crazy people.
http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1791558
and by making your funny website youve really accomplished nothing except giving the world a few moments of laughter from your own stupidity
xD
I can harly type, I am so pissed. This blog has got to be the DUMBEST! I don’t believe in the pinata-violence S#!t! This is so stupid! Just-GO AWAY!