Comment by skywhopper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skywhopper | Hacker News Reader

Unrelated to the article: I really liked the picture of the Statue of Liberty in the article, but having been to Liberty Island myself, I thought it looked sort of off (there are no trees in front of the statue and no bridges behind it, and likely nowhere you could actually stand to get that particular angle and framing, without using some crazy telephoto setup). At first I thought the pyramidical skyscraper in the background was the Transamerica building in San Francisco and perhaps this was a shot of a replica Statue in the Bay area. But again, the bridge was unfamiliar and the apparent distance from the statue to the bridge and the city behind it did not fit with my recollection of San Francisco Bay geography.

But after doing a little bit of poking around at where replicas of the Statue of Liberty may be found (there are lots of them!), this one appears to be on the artificial island of Odaiba in Tokyo Bay. That's Tokyo in the background and the Rainbow Bridge. (See the wikipedia page on Odaiba[0] for a similarly framed shot.)

Anyway it's a great shot of the replica, the bridge, and the city of Tokyo. Credit for the photo is down at the end of the article[1], but whether the author of the piece realized what the photo was actually of or not, I'm now savoring the additional layers of context and irony the photo brings to the piece.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odaiba [1] https://unsplash.com/photos/S9lCKQ9XS8c

An interesting thing is that since the only specific landmarks in the SoftBank emoji that Apple originally adopted were the Statue of Liberty, Moai, Tokyo Tower and the Shibuya 109 department store; reasonably the only reason the Statue of Liberty is encoded in Unicode Emoji is due to this replica in Odaiba.

The Moai has a replica at Shibuya Station (and even now if you type in "しぶや" into an iPhone it will suggest the Moai emoji) https://emojipedia.org/moyai/

Shibuya 109 never made it into Unicode since it's a commercial building https://emojipedia.org/shibuya/

At the very beginning it was the original sister one, not a replica:

> The French Statue of Liberty from the Île aux Cygnes came to Odaiba, Tokyo, from April 1998 to May 1999 in commemoration of "The French year in Japan". Because of its popularity, in 2000 a replica of the French Statue of Liberty was erected at the same place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicas_of_the_Statue_of_Libe...

Interestingly, that probably means that that photo is illegitimate. Photos of sculptural entities attached to architecture are considered copyright breaches in Japan, and Odaiba is certainly not old enough to have moved into PD.

What is copyright breach in one country, it is not necessarily in the other one. One cannot just impose laws to other countries, that is why countries are sovereign.

To impose copyright restrictions in other countries there must be either international agreement or the law in that other country that permits such limits.

Author here.

I really had trouble finding the photo of the Statue of Liberty during night that I could use in this article. Unsplash gave me just this one photo. Wikimedia Commons gave me nothing. Flickr gave me more results, but they were mostly from Vegas (easy to spot for me) or Tokyo (difficult to spot for me). I have re-searched Flickr now (with the "all creative commons" filter selected), and I still can't find a photo that I could guarantee is a real thing, let alone a photo that looks as good as the Unsplash one I have used.

I now regret making that decision, because if I knew that this was Tokyo in the background, I would avoid using it.

Here are some:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Statue_of_Libert...

Nonetheless, it adds an even greater depth to the absurdity of the premise of intellectual property your article discusses.

A photo with its own special attribution and reuse rights, depicting a full-scale replica (possibly with its own special rights for time of day), of an original that, by way of simple expiration under the letter of the law (and not so much in the spirit of the work itself) has effectively released its photographic and replicative rights to the world, which do not cascade on down to other replicas or depictions.

So I can produce an inspiring and original work, permit the world to replicate it in full and depict in images, but those that do so can make me beg to reference their work. Riiiiiight.

> Statue of Liberty

There is also a smaller version of the one found in New York in Paris - not sure why they decided to have an additional token there, and whether it was during Eiffel's time or much later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Ele_aux_Cygnes

"A notable feature is a quarter-scale replica of Liberty Enlightening the World, commonly known as the Statue of Liberty, 22 metres tall and facing west in the direction of its larger sibling in New York City. Inaugurated by President Marie François Sadi Carnot on 4 July 1889, nearly three years after its US counterpart, it was donated to the city by the Parisian expatriots in the United States and Canada to mark the centennial of the French Revolution."

Not that this really adds to the depth of the conversation, but I thought it was interesting, and so will share, that this Marie Francois Sadi Carnot is the nephew of the Carnot that HN readers might recognize for discovering maximally efficient engine cycles.

There are much more, and entirely official ones to boot:

The first try was 3m high, was followed by a 12m one in plaster kept at musée des Arts et Métiers, and later used for a 12 unit run of bronze casts, one of which stands outside the same museum.

Then there's one currently standing in musée d'Orsay since 2012, moved from jardin du Luxembourg. This was the first bronze cast made from the plaster one, unrelated to the 12 run.

Finally there's one which was gifted by a US association to France in honor of the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution, erected at Ile des Cygnes. It was due to stand facing the NY one but was made facing east so that it would not turn its back to president Carnot on it's inauguration in 1889.

Another 12m one has been erected in 2004 in Colmar, the town where Bartholdi was born to honor then hundredth anniversary of his death, but it's not made of bronze.

http://www.colmar.fr/statue-liberte-colmar#main-content

Harrisburg PA has an unofficial one as well, though only 25 ft high. Originally put up as a prank on an old bridge piling, then replaced it with the current (metal and slightly larger) version when the plywood one blew off.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mini-statue-of-liberty-h...

Japan has a few replicas. For a very underwhelming experience I recommend visiting the one in Oirase, Aomori in the middle of winter. At least you won't be troubled by any other tourists getting in the way in your photos. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Statue_of_Libert...

A few? That's quite bizarre is it not? How many other countries have a few replicas of a monument?

China has a lot: http://uk.businessinsider.com/photos-of-fake-world-landmarks...

There's about two dozen Eiffel towers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower_replicas_and_deri...

And there's a lot of the lady of Liberty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicas_of_the_Statue_of_Libe...

From what I've seen of Tokyo, the Japanese seem to have a crush on France in general. Tokyo is littered with French-themed spaces, and Paris Syndrome is particularly noted among Japanese travelers. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome

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