Dostoyevsky relative sues lottery over unauthorized use of writer’s imageBy Irina Titova
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) — A great-grandson of the famed Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky is suing a countrywide sports lottery for using his forebear’s image on tickets without seeking permission.
Dmitry Dostoyevsky, 59, said use of the writer’s image by Chestnaya Igra, or Honest Game, to sell lottery tickets was unauthorized — and insulting. He said Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the author of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, struggled for years to overcome a gambling addiction.
His great-grandson has filed a lawsuit against Chestnaya Igra in Moscow’s Tagansky district court claiming 200,000 rubles (US$7,150) in moral damages.
But he said recently that the fight was not about money.
“To use the addiction of the great writer, which he was struggling to overcome all his life, for commercial purposes is insulting not only for me as Dostoyevsky’s descendant, but also for many other people who love to read his works,” Dmitry Dostoyevsky said.
Sergei Voronov, Dostoyevsky’s lawyer, said Russian law prohibits the use of a cultural or artistic figure for commercial purposes without authorization.
Chestnaya Igra said it put the portraits of a number of Russian cultural greats, including the 18th-century scientist Mikhail Lomonosov and 18th-century military commander Gen. Alexander Suvorov, on tickets for “educational purposes.”
“A participant in the lottery receives not only a chance to become a big prize-winner but also to get acquainted with short biographical information about his great compatriot on the back side of the ticket,” said Natella Starodubtseva, a spokeswoman for Chestnaya Igra.
She said Chestnaya Igra used an 1872 portrait of Fyodor Dostoyevsky by a well-known known Russian artist, Vasily Perov, and that the picture had “become public property and can be freely used by any person.”
The 50-ruble ($1.78) lottery tickets, sold in post offices, can win their holders a car or its monetary equivalent of 150,000 rubles ($5,352) and also lesser sums.
The lottery is administered by the Sports Russia charitable organization, and some of the profits help fund construction projects aimed at boosting the country’s sports facilities.
― Huk-L, Wednesday, 2 March 2005 15:49 (twenty years ago)
Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we
come to tabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice
two make four? Twice two makes four without my will. As if free will
meant that!
― Huk-L, Wednesday, 2 March 2005 15:57 (twenty years ago)
And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the
normal and the positive--in other words, only what is conducive to
welfare--is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards
advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being?
Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a
benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately,
in love with suffering, and that is a fact. There is no need to appeal
to universal history to prove that; only ask yourself, if you are a man and
have lived at all. As far as my personal opinion is concerned, to care only
for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it
is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.
― Huk-L, Wednesday, 2 March 2005 15:58 (twenty years ago)
For myself, I lost all that I had on me, and with great speed. To begin with, I staked two hundred gulden on " even," and won. Then I staked the same amount again, and won: and so on some two or three times. At one moment I must have had in my hands--gathered there within a space of five minutes--about 4000 gulden. That, of course, was the proper moment for me to have departed, but there arose in me a strange sensation as of a challenge to Fate--as of a wish to deal her a blow on the cheek, and to put out my tongue at her. Accordingly I set down the largest stake allowed by the rules--namely, 4000 gulden--and lost. Fired by this mishap, I pulled out all the money left to me, staked it all on the same venture, and--again lost! Then I rose from the table, feeling as though I were stupefied. What had happened to me I did not know; but, before luncheon I told Polina of my losses-- until which time I walked about the Park.
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 2 March 2005 16:13 (twenty years ago)