I cannot believe I missed the attempt by Egypt to copyright certain antiquities like, well, all of them. They want to make it so that reproducing any item in an Egyptian museum or historical site would involve paying royalties and/or licensing fees to the Egypt.

This was linked from OnTheCommons, which normally has a viewpoint on this sort of things that I agree with, and I think he covers the immediate reaction of astonishment and bemoaning the state we have reached with detrimentally expansive intellectual property restrictions. Yet, the official reason for this attempt is that Egypt is having trouble paying to adequately maintain its national treasures. Whether or not that is true (I've already whined too much about politics on the blog this week), considering the long fight Egypt has had to undergo to maintain control of these items, the incredible popularity of copying them (I spent an astonishing amount of time in the Hard Rock Cafe in Myrtle Beach, SC ... it's a massive pyramid crammed with rock memorabilia), and the madness that is already happening in this country with copyright issues, there is a big part of me that says "Bully for them if they can figure how to make money off of it."


P.S. No, I didn't miss the fact that only exact copies would have to pay royalties, so Hard Rock would be exempt, but my point still stands.