Debs-is-Dead  comments at MoA:

Here's a thought: We've all seen those articles where some local merchant like Peter MacDonald opens a restaurant called McDonalds and get sued by the poison purveyors especially if he puts a big yellow "M" at the front door.

Or the guys who used to screen T shirts with 'Enjoy Cocaine' drawn in traditional copper plate script get chased by lawyers and the media just prattles on about intellectual property.

Few years ago Lego toys started churning out action figures (dolls for boys) called Bionicles that were meant to be a mixture of hi tech and primitive. Their names were all the same as well known polynesian particularly Maori, chieftains. The facial and clothing designs were close to many traditional Maori patterns.

When the NGO set up to protect indigenous artworks in this part of the world dragged Lego into court the NGO got its ass kicked in a way that MacDonalds and Cocoa Cola never have.

So if intellectual property laws aren't censorship, why is not wanting a human to try and replicate the image of that which billions of people hold dearest considered to be censorship?

Oh No! Can it really be true that the laws consider money more important than human emotion? Tsk Tsk Who would have guessed?

It's an interesting problem.  If the Imams founded a corporation and copyrighted the image of the Prophet, would they be on sturdier ground with their repressive effort?  Why is it perfectly acceptable for intelprop laws to be invoked to enforce strict centralised control of the appearance and dissemination of a visual image (like a Disney character for example), while the same kind of control attempt by a religious faction elicits outrage and nyah-nyah baiting?  Are we, like the US army, fighting yesterday's wars?

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...