Trademarked
One of the heroes of embattled free speech rights, Ezra Levant, chronicles in "Mohammed, PBUH, TM" (at his website, June 12 -- thanks to Sounder) a rather inept stealth jihad attempt by a Canadian Muslim -- for whom Kurt Westergaard might have a few choice words.
I think another lawsuit is coming my way.Today, my lawyer received this letter from a radical Muslim activist in Toronto. It's a Certificate of Registration of Copyright. He claims to have copyrighted the image of Mohammed, PBUH (which stands for "peace be upon him"). In other words, it's now Mohammed, PBUH, TM.
I checked it out on Industry Canada's copyright database and, sure enough, there it is: two weeks ago, Akhtar "Hector" Agha has indeed registered a "Restriction on Depiction of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)". It's right there on the government website.
I'm not sure, but I think "Hector" might be looking for a royalties payment for whenever I do something like post this picture.
At least I think that's what he's on about. But he has also addressed his letter to Stockwell Day, the Minister for Public Security. Frankly, when folks like Hector voluntarily report their activities to the minister in charge of fighting domestic jihad, that's what we call a freebie....
But there is more to this document besides pure comedy. Look at the top right corner of the second page: it says OIC/Summit.
That's a reference to the "Organisation of the Islamic Conference", basically an all-Muslim UN. The OIC Summit this March, in Dakar, Senegal, had as its theme the censorship of Western criticism of radical Islam. Here's a story about it, featuring a glamour shot of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The theme of the conference was how to use the laws of Western countries against themselves.
That's what Hector is doing. He was pretty excited about the OIC's call for a soft jihad against the West. The boys in Al Qaida and Hamas will take care of the hard jihad -- actually blowing up Westerners. The soft jihadists -- like Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress, like Syed Soharwardy the bigoted Calgary imam, like Hector -- are actually more dangerous, because they use our own laws against us to weaken our country and erode our free way of life.
(But note the thinly-veiled allusion to violence in Hector's letter: "...it is very fortunate for Canada not to have suffered property loss or injury/causality here or abroad". I think he meant casualty, but frankly his poor command of English adds a degree of menace, don't you think? And then he demands certain videos be taken off YouTube, saying "I hope videos like this will not catch much attention for illegal activity which could harm Canada by terrorism, criminal extremism or suspicious activities". Nice country you have there -- shame if anything would happen to it.)
Hector is trying to seize the property rights to the image of Mohammed, so that no infidels like me can publish them....
Read it all.
How can he trademark something that was drawn by someone else?
If anything, Kurt Westergaard would have rights to this picture (I thought that was one of the issues re: FITNA).
If the Canadian copyright system is anything like the American one, he would have had to supply them with depictions of Mohammed as examples of what he was trying to copyright.
Doesn't that merit at least a stoning from his co-religionists, for causing those graven images of the Prophet to be published?
This is a claim to hold copyright to ALL images of the Muslim prophet, Muhammad, not just this one cartoon image. The registrant is not lacking in confidence -- but his ambitious claim might be challenged by other Muslim wannabe copyright holders. What did Muhammad say about this? Surely he had the foresight to include it in his detailed regulations for life for Muslims.
There is also the matter of puclic domain, for a number of Mohammad images.
Again, I am unfamiliar with the Canadian system, but if certain copyrightable material has been freely available to the general public for a number of years, it can't be restricited.
That is why anybody can publish or perform Shakespeare plays and poetry.
Quick! Someone grab the copyright for cartoons of Ubal Kassim!
The theme adumbrated here, which will be dealt with in Robert Spencer's "Stealth Jihad" at greater length, is the fact that war by other means is still war, and it is silly to confine our attention to either the hot wars, or quasi-hot wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, or to the "war on terrorism" about which we hear so much, but never hear about the war --- a war requiring constant vigilance and a refusal to modify, in any way, or legal and political institutions and social arrangements, to Muslim demands -- that is being, and will continue forever to be conducted, by Muslims within the Lands of the Infidels.
Right now the campaigns against Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn mark the most important attempts to use ill-advised laws, within the Western world, to undo the mental freedoms that created and in turn were created by that Western world.
This deserves more attention, and is certainly more important, than what the Sunni tribes of Anbar do or do not do against Al Qaeda, or the Sunni party in the Iraqi Parliament, or against the Shi'a government in Baghdad, more important than what the forces of Moqtada al-Sadr do, or do not do, against the forces of SCIRI and DAWA in southern Iraq.
When this is clearly understood, and every little or big bit helps, the West, and other non--Western Infidels (as in India, Thailand, Ethiopia) will be on their way to checking, and pushing back, against the inroads, against the very presence, of Muslims in Infidel lands, where they may temporarily, and most feignedly, hide their ultimate goals and modify their means, but given the immutable texts and tenets of Islam, anyone from here on out, still calling himself a Muslim, can reasonably be held to be a supporter of, unless he is a vocal exposer of, that Stealth Jihad -- which Robert Spencer may want to start writing with a little TM sign, just for the hell of it.
I believe copyright laws only become actionable when I try to make money off of using someone else's work. If I'm just showing it to show it, there is no violation of law.
But I'm no lawyer and have never played one on TV.
The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
If images of the prophet (piss be upon him) are haram, how can they be copyrighted? How can they exist at all?
These guys haven't seen lawyers - the idea of having a picture removed from the web - that you did not draw - yourself and you do not own - might be an expensive operation.
One) for creativity.
I suppose with the permission of the Imam-in-charge Muslims are allowed to think sometimes.
--
Okay well - truthfully - is that really a picture of Muhammad? How do we know what Muhammad looks like - how can you prove that this is - indeed a picture of Muhammad? To me it could easily be mistaken for a man in a turban - with a lit fuse - but whether it's definitely Muhammad - well I don't know!!
Soft Jihad – back to you!
Cartoons? We'll make more.
One can hardly say that picture is an illustration of Mohammed. Has anyone met him? Are there any accurate paintings or sketches of him? If there were, I'm sure the artists are all DEAD (TM) and the artwork destroyed.
Ezra Levant's Update: "I've accepted commenters' suggestions to use © rather than TM. I just had to figure out how to write that symbol!"
So there you have it, it is: "Mohammed, PBUH, ©"
This guy didn't copyright any images of Mohammed. It's a trick. I lay it out in a blog post.
http://tinyurl.com/62ohx3
"The Constitution is Not a Suicide Pact"
Yes, it is. If the only way to "save" the USA is to shred the Constitution, then the country just committed suicide. The principles espoused in that document are what makes this country what it is, not the geography, and not even the people. That document is our national DNA. And if you are willing to abandon those principles "for the good of the Nation", then you are willing to destroy the Nation.
Just as there have been Americans willing, time and time again, to die rather than surrender to an enemy, so too should the Nation be ready to die than surrender its principles.
The people mentioned in that article are wise and erudite statesmen and jurisits, yet I am forced to disagree.
"The Constitution is Not a Suicide Pact"
Yes, it is. If the only way to "save" the USA is to shred the Constitution, then the country just committed suicide. The principles espoused in that document are what makes this country what it is, not the geography, and not even the people. That document is our national DNA. And if you are willing to abandon those principles "for the good of the Nation", then you are willing to destroy the Nation.
Just as there have been Americans willing, time and time again, to die rather than surrender to an enemy, so too should the Nation be ready to die than surrender its principles.
The people mentioned in that article are wise and erudite statesmen and jurisits, yet I am forced to disagree.
Apologies for the multi-post.
"The Constitution is Not a Suicide Pact"
No! And isn't every ordinary person becoming an American citizen supposed to uphold and defend it against enemies domestic and foreign? I guess this doesn't apply to born Americans such as George "I just never got that fence built" Bush Jr.
shred the Constitution - nice melodrama.
just committed suicide - ditto
destroy the Nation - ditto
...not even the people...That document is our national DNA - please see above to see who established and who ordained.
abandon those principles - suspension of any portion of the written contract, to FIX it, is not the same as abandonment in all or part of the "principles". Also, you're approaching idolatry on the Constitution. If your car or fuse box is smoking, do you leave it on to fix it? What was the point of allowing for amendments? Martial law? What if more acute intervention is needed that a constitutional convention?
"for the good of the Nation" - nice sneer quotes. The physical survival or avoidance of subjugation of the people is never to be considered? What about those virtuous principles above in the preamble? Do we hold to the letter to the death, or do we continue to aspire toward those goals? Think hard about each of those objectives; are we meeting them today?
...so too should the Nation be ready to die than surrender its principles - how poetic, dramatic, poignant. Don't worry, we're not even going to have to roll over for that to happen. We're already surrendering our principles, that is why we're dying. So just let your family die, rather than hinder the capricious external subversion of our system of government, which has morphed into something completely unintended.
wise and erudite statesmen and jurisits[sic] - well, at least it's good company. Didn't Jefferson have something to do with writing the Constitution?
We've got to get beyond platitudes and lemming-like deferences if we are to survive what is ahead. Our enemy intends to hang us with our own rope.
"Our enemy intends to hang us with our own rope." Posted by Concerned Citizen.
There you have it, a hanging, even if by trickery as pointed out in Right From Alberta's comment above.
These "prides of our nation's" islamists and disrupters would rather stick it in the eye of the host nation and all the Kafir, by trick or by abusing our laws to bring down the west by our "own filthy hand".
Maximum disruption while at the same time the contempt for western values, rule of law, fairness, free speech, the safety and security these Muslims could enjoy here, shows it all means nothing to them. What in h*ell are they doing here then? It makes the Muslim Brotherhood plan for the west more plausible with every hateful treacherous, treasonous action against us all whilst the flower children sing 'Kumbaya' all day long.
These are the causes of "Islamophobia" No wonder.
The second page of Akhtar Agha's letter is pretty much incoherent. The web site to which he gives a url is the Patent Act, which has nothing whatever to do with copyright. It looks like another red herring.
"...a glamour shot of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."
Now there's an oxy-moron for you (emphasis on the second half of that word).