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This article argues that since genetic resources carry cultural significanceto many Indigenous communities, the protection of genetic resourcesshould be considered in relation to the protection of Indigenous culturalheritage. It compares international regulations of genetic resources andassociated 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 discusseshow attempts to decolonise the regulation of genetic resources areimpeded by two dilemmas that have also affected UNESCO and WIPO’sattempts to safeguard traditional cultural expressions. The first dilemmaconcerns the problems of promoting Indigenous self-recognition withina system of governance based on national agency and sovereignty.The second dilemma concerns how international regulations are basedon a Western ontology that polarises natural and cultural resources, whichhas resulted in a reluctance to address intellectual property rights withinthe CBD. Exploring parallels between the regulation of genetic resourcesand traditional cultural expressions provides new perspectives on thedifficulties facing the decolonisation of the protection of Indigenousresources and the implementation of Indigenous data sovereignty., Funding agencies:Swedish Research CouncilSwedish Research Council; Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions [E0633901], Commons and Commodities

Television delivery throughout the world has changed rapidly over the past two decades. Within South Africa, much of this global narrative is repeated. The last 25 years have seen a move from a single monopoly broadcaster within the ‘public service’ tradition (but later subsumed into the apartheid political agenda), to the present situation of a multi-company, multi-platform, increasingly digital delivery, calling into question even the very definition of ‘broadcasting’. ‘Global difference’ in South Africa plays out through a relatively late start but surprisingly short catch-up period, emphasizing a demographic/socio-economic specificity that has resulted in a highly skewed television market in which the uptake of high-end technology is less widespread than in other more ‘developed’ markets, and where the taste of local programming dominates even the technologically advanced sectors. The move toward a digital regime, together with the introduction of competition, has provided challenges to the regulatory regime. The majority of the audience share, however, remains with local programming, regardless of its delivery.

Orthodox copyright scholarship frames piracy in ‘developing’ countries as a detrimental and illegal practice that results from these countries’ lack of economic, social and cultural development. It argues that piracy needs to be discouraged, regulated, and finally overcome for legitimate business to flourish. In this article, the authors challenge this viewpoint and question whether the implementation of international copyright instruments in legislation across Africa really promotes those local economies or if it merely exposes them to neo-colonial exploitation. While the early international treaties on intellectual property rights (IPR) were formulated by European states and implemented in most parts of Africa through colonial laws, more recent legislation has been globally implemented through institutions such as the United Nations or the World Trade Organization, which remain dominated by Western interests. Through a structured overview of the adoption of IPR treaties in African countries, the authors advance a political economy perspective of intellectual property rights as a (neo-)colonial regime., Les membres de l’école traditionnelle sur les questions de droits d’auteurs mettent en avant le piratage dans les pays « en développement » comme une pratique préjudiciable et illégale qui résulte du manque de développement économique, social et culturel de ces pays. Ils soutiennent que le piratage doit être découragé, réglementé et finalement surmonté pour que le commerce légitime puisse prospérer. À travers cet article, nous remettons en question ce point de vue et nous nous demandons si la mise en place de mesures internationales relatives au droit d’auteur dans la législation à travers le continent africain, favorise réellement ces économies locales ou si elles ne font que les exposer à l’exploitation néo-coloniale. Alors que les premiers traités internationaux sur les droits de propriété intellectuelle étaient formulés par des États européens puis appliqués à travers la plupart des régions d’Afrique à travers les lois coloniales, plus récemment la législation a été globalement mise en oeuvre par des institutions telles que l’Organisation des Nations unies ou l’Organisation mondiale du commerce, qui restent dominées par les intérêts occidentaux. À travers une vue d’ensemble structurée de l’adoption des traités sur les droits de propriété intellectuelle dans les pays africains, nous mettons en avant une perspective d’économie politique des droits de propriété intellectuelle en tant que régime (néo-)colonial.

Since the 1970s international law has tried to provide protection for traditional knowledge (TK) and traditional cultural expressions (TCEs). Academics, activists and policymakers have discussed how to apply a legal framework based on Western norms of authorship on various forms of creativity that exist in different traditional communities. While aiming to acknowledge indigenous rights, this discourse also reflects assumptions and distinctions regarding differences between indigenous and non-indigenous cultures, relating to concepts of commons as well as individual and collective authorship. Here certain norms of cultural creativity are taken for granted, not only with regards to indigenous cultures but also regarding a Western cultural heritage. This article questions these assumptions by analyzing international legislation regarding the protection of TCEs and comparing them to the articulation of creativity and cultural entitlements in European cultural and legal discourses. It takes a particular paragraph in the Swedish copyright law, regarding the so called “protection of classics”, as a case study to discuss the inconsistencies between individual authorship and collective cultural entitlements within Western copyright law. Eventually it takes a decolonizing perspective on dichotomies between concepts such as: Western/non-Western; modern/traditional; authored/non-authored and intellectual property/cultural property., Commons and Commodities, finansierat av Vetenskapsrådet och Marie Skldowska Curie Actions Grant E0633901

The ideas and ideals of authorship and the discourse on property rights that emerged in parallelsince the 18th century have come to form the bedrock of copyright law. Critical copyright scholars arguethat this construction of authorship and ownership contributes to individualisation and privatisationof artistic works that disregards the collective aspects of creativity. It also embodies a certain kind ofauthorial character—or “author function” as Michel Foucault puts it—imbued with racial and genderedpowers and privileges. While the gendered and racialised biases of intellectual property rights are welldocumented within copyright research, the commodification of ideas and cultural expressions relies onindividualisation of creativity that is significant not only to the cultural economy but also to the 20th-centurynotion of the entrepreneur as the protagonist of capitalism. This article relates the idea of the entrepreneurto the deconstruction of authorship that was initiated by Foucault and Roland Barthes in the late 1960s,and the critique of an author-centred IPR regime developed by law scholars in the 1990s. It asks if and howthe deconstruction of the author as a cultural and ideological persona that underpins the privatisationof immaterial resources can help us understand the construction and function of the entrepreneur inextractive capitalism., Commons and Commodities: Knowledge, Natural Resources and the Construction of Property

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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 ‘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., Funding agencies: Swedish Research Council; Marie Skldowska Curie Actions [E0633901, INCA 600398], Commons and Commodities

This book takes the concept of piracy as a starting point to discuss the instabilityof property as a social construction and how this is spatially situated. Piracyis understood as acts and practices that emerge in zones where the constructionand definition of property is ambiguous. Media piracy is a frequently usedexample where file-sharersand copyright holders argue whether culture andinformation is a common resource to be freely shared or property to be protected.This book highlights that this is not a dilemma unique to immaterialresources: concepts such as property, ownership and the rights of use are just asdiffuse when it comes to spatial resources such as land, water, air or urban space.By structuring the book around this heterogeneous understanding of piracy asan analytical perspective, the editors and contributors advance a transdisciplinaryand multi-theoreticalapproach to place and property. In doing so, thebook moves from theoretical discussions on commons and property to empiricalcases concerning access to and appropriation of land, natural and culturalresources. The chapters cover areas such as maritime piracy, the philosophicaland legal foundations of property rights, mining and land rights, biopiracy andtraditional knowledge, indigenous rights, colonization of space, military expansionismand the enclosure of urban space.This book is essential reading for a variety of disciplines including indigenousstudies, cultural studies, geography, political economy, law, environmentalstudies and all readers concerned with piracy and the ambiguity of property.