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August 23, 2008
Big Brother vs. Piñata Pirates
OfficialWire is carrying a story about piñata vendors in Guadalajara being busted by the police for carrying unlicensed Spider Man piñatas. According to the report, "This month's police effort was prompted by complaints made by Marvel Entertainment's lawyers in Mexico who alleged illegal Spider-Man products were being produced in Mexico."
This is the kind of thing that scares Shawn and I into thinking that Mexico might be too close to the influence of the United States for us, and that we might have to move on to another country to truly get away from the big bully we tried to leave behind.
Our former neighbor Alberto always reassured us, whenever something like this happened, that they were merely token acts of enforcement by the police and nothing to worry about. Mexicans would never tolerate grand scale prosecution of citizens for such minor crimes, he thought.
While we hope that is true, the arrested men may have to pay up to MXN $600,000 (nearly USD $59,150) for their transgressions. At current rates, they would have to have sold something like 11,000 of the offending piñatas to have made anything near that.
Posted by crispy at August 23, 2008 03:11 PM
Comments
Life is suffering.
If you want to elude Amerikan influence, no place is safe, including space.
[crispy says: That is indeed true. I do not necessarily need to avoid all American influence - it would be a sad world without American music, for example - but getting away from the authoritarian, litigious, sticking their nose into other people's business aspects would be nice.]
Posted by: Mark Allen at August 24, 2008 07:36 AM
It is worthy of note that "intellectual property" is one of the few things Amerika produces and can sell, so I understand the dynamic.
I have a hard time believing such actions will increase patronage of Spider-Man movies, however.
Posted by: Mark Allen at August 24, 2008 08:22 PM