Burns Coleman, Elizabeth --- "The Disneyland of Cultural Rights to Intellectual Property: Anthropological and Philosophical Perspectives" [2008] ELECD 324; in Graber, Beat Christoph; Burri-Nenova, Mira (eds), "Intellectual Property and Traditional Cultural Expressions in a Digital Environment" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: Intellectual Property and Traditional Cultural Expressions in a Digital Environment

Editor(s): Graber, Beat Christoph; Burri-Nenova, Mira

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847209214

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: The Disneyland of Cultural Rights to Intellectual Property: Anthropological and Philosophical Perspectives

Author(s): Burns Coleman, Elizabeth

Number of pages: 24

Extract:

3. The Disneyland of cultural rights to
intellectual property: anthropological
and philosophical perspectives
Elizabeth Burns Coleman
In this paper I will argue against the concept of a human right to intellectual
property in traditional cultural expressions (TCE), in so far as they are defined
as arts. In so doing, however, I do not deny, and indeed intend to defend, the
intuition that there are moral issues surrounding the use and transmission of
TCE. I will argue that, while there is no human right to the protection of arts,
not all TCE should be thought of as "arts", as this misrepresents the functional
role they play. However, once we see what role they play, and why we should
accept that they are morally important, we should not think of them as human
rights.


1. INTRODUCTION
The "right to culture" is considered a human right. Article 27 of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR)1 states, that "[i]n
those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons
belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in the community
with other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and
practice their own religion, or to use their own language". The right to enjoy
one's culture might be considered uncontroversial if it were merely taken to
mean that it would be wrong of a government to forcibly suppress or destroy
the culture of an indigenous minority group. Yet, the United Nations ...