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Who owns Einstein? The battle for the world’s most famous face
- daniel-cussen 4y agoNot the world's most famous face by any means. Not a battle either. As close as it gets to being an objectively clickbait title.
- the_lonely_road 4y agoIt’s probably impossible to figure out who the worlds most famous face is but given that constraint we can still do a thought experiment on who we think the worlds most famous face would be. I would pick Jesus but it’s questionable if he was even real and what he looked like if he wa. So going with faces we can be certain of, Einstein seems like a solid pick. Maybe Mona Lisa if the portrait counts.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoAlso Hitler or Donald Trump
- Emma_Goldman 4y agoI would say this has >50% chance of being the right answer. I would also treat Gandhi, Mao, Che, and a few 'celebrities' like Cristiano Ronaldo and Leonardo DiCaprio as contenders.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago+++By this point it is in fact Donald Trump. Hitler was famous once, not anymore, people don't connect with the Holocaust and WW2 like they did in the 90's. If you're born after 2000 it might as well be the Napoleonic Wars, some stuff that was on the test and nothing more. ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. But now it's Trump. Because of all the bad press. There was a slowdown in the media markets when he left the presidency because they were talking about him or his administrations in the majority of headlines. I judge 65% of big headlines were about him or his administration. Well you can't look at it objectively, it's different for every news source. ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ I'm going to swear this comment cryptographically, like I did in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31451260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31451260. Nonce: 27965+++ EDIT: I'm having difficulty working with HN, especially puncuation modifications, it's tricky to copy paste into eg https://geraintluff.github.io/sha256/ https://geraintluff.github.io/sha256/ To get that oath, hash that message as ASCII, everything between the triple +'s, "+++". Keep those out. You must get 0002a29ee3e809d4dcf5adc2bc1fc7ed61a10a01efc37eb2207bdad9193b1ebf But copy the string into the console, not in the entry. This is currently not an easy process.
- deltree7 4y agoEinstein is more famous than Jesus and Mona Lisa. 40% of the world population are from India and China (a Non-Jesus country). Kids at a very young age are introduced to Einstein in pretty much every school. Mona Lisa not so much. In fact, growing up, I didn't know about Mona Lisa till about age 20
- potta_coffee 4y agoThere are many Christians in India and in China. The Bible is the best selling book of all time. I'm certain that Jesus is more popular than Einstein. Not that care, but your post is not factual.
- CharlesW 4y ago> Einstein is more famous than Jesus and Mona Lisa. Also, we have very few photos of Jesus or the subject of the Mona Lisa.
- daniel-cussen 4y agoYou gotta be able to trust Da Vinci with his rendition of Mona Lisa, and for that matter, The Light of the World, about Jesus. So there is some stuff we know from different places about Iesus Nazareni Rex Iudaeorum, like that for instance he had hair like his FATHER, (Matthew KJV you cannot put one hair back on your head, paraphrased, which was a reference to Jesus having a full head of hair). Unlike Julius Caesar. Plus you have iconoclastism. It is specifically forbidden in the Bible to make images of GOD, it was just done anyway after a war over that.
- tintedfireglass 4y agoA lot of non Christians know about Jesus. There are millions of illiterate and uneducated people who don't know about Einstein but are aware of Jesus. So I'd wager on Jesus.
- LocalH 4y agoBut Jesus’ face? I don’t think anyone today ‘knows’ what he looked like.
- boomboomsubban 4y agoWashington, Lincoln, or the Queen, due to currency. Maybe Mao for similar reasons.
- Insanity 4y agoWashington? I don’t know for sure what he looks like, feels quite US specific. But for some reason Lincoln I do know. I would guess the “Mona Lisa”. Or maybe actors in popular films like Robert Downey Jr.
- vertigolimbo 4y agoThat's very US centric comment. I would need to think deep to picture Washington. I tell you what - it's the face of the most advertised person. Currency is not used for advertising. So out of three, it's easiest to recollect Lincoln with stove top with US flag and pointing finger. Her majesty comes second because all the memes of her longevity. The most recognisable? Certain Hollywood actors. Period.
- corrral 4y ago> Washington, Lincoln, or the Queen How are those gonna do inside that surprisingly-small circle you can draw over Asia and Oceania that contains half the world's population? How about all of Africa? Whichever face it is, it's probably recognizable to both Indians and Chinese people. I wouldn't be surprised the winner's a well-known bodhisattva. Though that opens up the question of whether it has to be a photo, and if not, the Lisa Gherardini might be a real contender (though possibly disqualified, since that identification isn't 100% certain).
- boomboomsubban 4y agoLike a third of Africa is in the Commonwealth, as is India and much of Oceania. Maybe I've read too many articles about US currency being used across the world. That said, I've seen a surprising amount of foreign programs reference Lincoln's image. Considering there are hundreds of billions of pennies in existence I suspect he's more well known than you'd think, even though they primarily are in the US.
- 4y ago
- blackoil 4y agoWould be Iron man or Spiderman, recent and popular across the world.
- rhacker 4y agoIf you asked everyone in the world to draw Trump's face and Einstein's face I bet you more people would draw Trump more accurately. But both have crazy hair so maybe it would be a toss up.
- ipaddr 4y agoClose, it's Buddha.
- oh_sigh 4y agoWho is the world's most famous face then? Hitler? Mona Lisa? Michael Jackson? Hide the Pain Harold?
- dimator 4y agoI would bet there's a large number of people who know Harold more than the others :)
- inanutshellus 4y agoThe smiley face. :)
- slowmovintarget 4y agoI would have said Ghandi... though polling suggests it's actually Queen Elizabeth II.
- potta_coffee 4y agoThat's interesting. Her face is on a lot of paper currency, I'm sure that contributes to her recognition.
- daniel-cussen 4y agoThat was originally the way money equalled fame. Also time in many monarchies was tied to the biography of the monarch. In Japan it was so, the Meiji period. In Matthew Mark Luke and John, KJV.
- throwaway28203 4y agoI was thinking Marilyn Monroe.
- RunawayGalaxy 4y agoIt's crazy how much energy is spent trying to constrain free information flow.
- deltree7 4y agoIf you read the article it is certainly more nuanced. * The money is going to a Top University. * There are strict limitations about how the images / brand can be used. I especially like the idea of not mis-quoting and fabricating quotes associated with Einstein.
- dTal 4y agoI find myself unimpressed by this "nuance". * Does the "Top University" need the cash? Who is it coming from, and who is to say they do not need it more? * Evidence suggests this has not in practice been prevented.
- rvnx 4y agoStanford for example costs several billions to run.
- deltree7 4y agoExactly, it is not just operational cost for 1 year, but Stanford and Hebrew universities have to survive the next 500 years of humanity for the benefit of humanity. No amount of Cash in the Reserve is enough for a 500 year plan
- dangus 4y agoThese are top schools with huge endowment funds that act as investment vehicles. Many of them could theoretically operate indefinitely without ever charging tuition, if the funds were hypothetically allowed to be used in that way. Someone did some napkin math on this for Harvard on Quora: https://qr.ae/pvAQ7v https://qr.ae/pvAQ7v Now, this person didn't do a great job accounting for inflation, but I do think a professionally managed endowment can get much better than a 3% return on its investments to cover inflation. Harvard's endowment is pretty close to the same size as Stanford. It's really just the small, less prestigious universities that have financial issues [1]. The Stanfords and Harvards of the world don't need any help. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/27/more-colleges-face-bankruptcy-but-top-schools-experience-record-wealth.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/27/more-colleges-face-bankruptc...
- brink 4y agoQuite disappointing to see people behave like this.
- Terry_Roll 4y ago> Who owns Einstein? The battle for the world’s most famous face (theguardian.com) Lawyers!
- colechristensen 4y agoHe died 67 years ago, nobody deserves to own his image.
- hilbert42 4y agoExactly, if the duration of these rights continue to escalate as they have with copyrights, performance rights and patents, then where will it end? How long will it be before we're forced to pay to have an image or likeness of Plato or Aristotle on the cover of a book? The identities of these people are already owned by the public - hence the existing interest in them - and are thus already in the public domain. As I see it, that vested interests can corrupt the democratic process by having laws introduced that would remove information that's already in the public domain for their own benefit is, of itself, antidemocratic.
- pmoriarty 4y agoThere's also a battle over who own Tesla. The point of contention is over whether he was Croatian or Serbian.
- wincy 4y agoWasn’t he American?
- cgriswald 4y agoHe was ethnically Serbian, was born in (what is now) Croatia, moved to the United States in his late 20s, and gained his United States citizenship in his mid-30s.
- ch_sm 4y agoYou could argue he was Austrian, because Croatia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time and he attended the University of Graz, Austria. I guess many people would like to call him a fellow countryman.
- pmoriarty 4y agoAt least with patents there's an argument to be made that patents are a public good because they encourage disclosure of inventions by their inventors. Copyright can similarly be argued to benefit the public by encouraging creators to create. But how does the public benefit from enforcing publicity rights?
- strbean 4y ago"If we don't enforce publicity rights, what incentive will people have to gain renown?" It's wild how nobody wrote or invented anything prior to the rise of intellectual property.
- pessimizer 4y agoOr had a face.
- bdowling 4y agoThe public benefit is that if you see a person's name or likeness used to promote a product, the public knows that the person (or their estate) consented to the use. Without publicity rights, anyone could use anyone else's name or likeness to sell anything.
- hanoz 4y agoYou appear to be still describing the estate's benefit, not the public's.
- hilbert42 4y ago"...anyone could use anyone else's name or likeness to sell anything." So what, why does it matter as long as the person is dead and there's no deception or pretense that they are directly associated with or are related to the said famous person? Essentially, the situation exists now, every newborn John Brown has appropriated the name of someone who's already died (and as we know at least one person with that name is already famous). BTW, Einstein isn't that an uncommon name, I've even met a person with that name who wasn't related to the physicist.
- WalterBright 4y ago> When Richman discovered that a chain of stores owned by Universal City Studios sold a sweatshirt with the slogan “E=mc2: Shit Happens”, he successfully had the sweatshirt banned, and forced Universal to pay $25,000 in damages. I'm unable to see the connection between a formula and Einstein's face.
- vmception 4y agoTurns out, everyone is able to see a connection between a protracted legal battle with a known litigious hound with deep pockets and success on this front. So they all settle or buy the license. The litigious entity gets their way.
- mhh__ 4y agoLike the guy who claims he invented email? He lies, you write an article about it, he sues you to death and you settle.
- hilbert42 4y agoLikewise, mathematical formulae are specifically excluded from copyright law, so I'm wondering how this ever got off the ground. If he won according to actual law and not misjudgment then there's something inconsistent with the law and it ought to be rectified.
- spoonjim 4y agoI don’t think likeness rights should outlive a person. I can leave assets to my children but why should they have any right to my face? They didn’t create my face, my parents did.