Search

This article examines §51 of the Swedish Copyright Act 1960, generally known as ‘the protection of classics’ in relation to international discourses on copyright in the mid-twentieth century. The provision in §51 protects works of cultural significance by deceased authors and artists against reproductions that are considered offensive, even if the works are in the public domain. This article analyses the arguments and motives that led Swedish legislators to draft §51 and contextualises them internationally. The origin of the protection of classics is rooted in the notion of a paying public domain, a provision which existed in various countries in the twentieth century that allowed the state to collect royalties for works in the public domain. In Swedish copyright law this economic right was reinterpreted as a moral right to protect classical works. Unlike conventional moral rights, this right aimed at protecting the interests of the public rather than the integrity of the author. The protection of classics, and to an extent the notion of a paying public domain, can be seen not so much as a regulation of intellectual property but more as a statement about cultural heritage. By showing how the protection of classics operated within the international discourse on copyright law of the twentieth century, this article explores the relation between moral rights, a paying public domain and cultural heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses §51 of the Swedish copyright law, known as “the protection of classics”, as a cultural policy intervention. §51 protects culturally significant works by deceased authors against reproductions that are considered offensive, even if the works are in the public domain and thus not protected by copyright. The article provides a brief overview of the origin of §51 and analyses potential cases of violation between 1960 and 2020, where the Swedish authorities threatened to sue for infringement against §51 but refrained for various reasons. It also considers a recent case, the Swedish Academy (Svenska Akademien) v. Nordfront, where §51 was, for the first time, tried in court. The cases involving §51 are diverse and the motivations for suing (or not) are different. However, taken together, these examples reflect changing cultural norms and values in Sweden during the twentieth century. This article will show how the value system that has shaped the protection of classics, and its subsequent use is aligned with a Swedish cultural policy discourse where priorities have shifted from protecting fine art against popular culture, to countering the negative consequences of commercialism, and to promoting multiculturalism and inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses how local, national and international interests are reflected in India's attempts to protect traditional knowledge through the formation of a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL). It compares how the digital library is contextualised within India's domestic policy with how it is presented to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The article argues that WIPO has endorsed the Indian initiative and embraced the promotion of protective databases as an uncontroversial tool that diverts attention from more contested forms of traditional knowledge protection. Consequently, India has been able to use WIPO as a platform to promote itself and the TKDL to the global community. Domestically, however, the library serves other purposes. Since it systematically documents a vast body of traditional medical knowledge, Indian authorities can use the library to claim that knowedge as part of a national cultural heritage, and as a source of scientific innovations to the economic and social benefit of the country. In that regard, the TKDL reflects an interplay among local, national and international interests, where the goal of protecting the traditional knowledge of indigenous and local communities against misappropriation risks being co-opted to serve national purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that since genetic resources carry cultural significance to many Indigenous communities, the protection of genetic resources should be considered in relation to the protection of Indigenous cultural heritage. It compares international regulations of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge to those of traditional cultural expressions, focusing particularly on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its implementation through the Nagoya Protocol. The article discusses how attempts to decolonise the regulation of genetic resources are impeded by two dilemmas that have also affected UNESCO and WIPO's attempts to safeguard traditional cultural expressions. The first dilemma concerns the problems of promoting Indigenous self-recognition within a system of governance based on national agency and sovereignty. The second dilemma concerns how international regulations are based on a Western ontology that polarises natural and cultural resources, which has resulted in a reluctance to address intellectual property rights within the CBD. Exploring parallels between the regulation of genetic resources and traditional cultural expressions provides new perspectives on the difficulties facing the decolonisation of the protection of Indigenous resources and the implementation of Indigenous data sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how resources that are perceived as common are turned into property through different interventions of extractivism, and how this provokes counter-activism from groups and actors who see their rights and living conditions threatened by the practices of extraction. The article looks at how extraction is enacted through three distinct practices: prospecting, enclosure and unbundling, studied through three different cases. The cases involve resources that are material and immaterial, renewable as well as non-renewable, ‘natural’ as well as man-made. Prospecting is exemplified by patenting of genetic resources and traditional knowledge, enclosure is exemplified by debates over copyright expansionism and information commons, and unbundling through conflicts over mining and gas extraction. The article draws on fieldwork involving interviews and participant observation with protesters at contested mining sites in Australia and with digital rights activists from across the world who protest against how the expansion of copyright limits public access to culture and information. The article departs from an understanding of &#x2018.commons’ not as an open access resource, but as a resource shared by a group of people, often subjected to particular social norms that regulate how it can be used. Enclosure and extraction are both social processes, dependent on recognising some and downplaying or misrecognising other social relations when it comes to resources and processes of property creation. These processes are always, regardless of the particular resources at stake, cultural in the sense that the uses of the commons are regulated through cultural norms and contracts, but also that they carry profound cultural and social meanings for those who use them. Finally, the commonalities and heterogeneities of these protest movements are analysed as ‘working in common’, where the resistance to extraction in itself represents a process of commoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article approaches the recent debates about copyright and piracy from a cultural and historical perspective, discussing how problems surrounding intellectual property rights (IPR) reflect cultural conflicts that are central to cultural studies. It sets out with a study of how international copyright norms developed in nineteenth-century Europe were implemented in two different national contexts: Sweden and the USA. This historical background shows how copyright has been embedded in the cultural history of Europe and intertwined with the idea of an evolving Western civilization. The examples from the past are thus used to highlight the underlying cultural implications that affect the contemporary discussions. Particular interest is paid to how the historical association between the spread of copyright and the development of civilization affects the understanding of Asian piracy and Western file sharing today, and how a multitude of social movements both in the West and the Third World simultaneously challenge the cultural legitimacy of the current system of IPR. Eventually this is also taken as an example of how law and culture intersect and how the broad, interdisciplinary field of copyright studies that has emerged over the last decade can be seen as an extension of the cultural studies tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]