[Nettime-bold] RE: <nettime> Intellectual Property Regimes and IndigenousSovereignty

[Francis Hwang <sera@fhwang.net>]

Ned Rossiter wrote:

>While there are numerous deficiencies in IP law with
>respect to protecting indigenous cultural production, for instance, this
>doesn't mean laws cannot be changed.

Perhaps I should clarify where I stand. Although it is theoretically 
possible to extend IP protection to protect indigenous cultural 
production, I think such a course of action would ultimately be 
disastrous. Wouldn't it theoretically make any sort of 
cross-pollination of cultures legally prohibitive? I know that in 
practices many of these instances can be considered co-optations. But 
there are enough exceptions to give me pause.

A good friend of mine is a Vietnamese spoken-word poet who makes 
heavy use of hip-hop idiom to express himself. Under a regime of 
collective cultural IP, wouldn't it be possible for African-Americans 
to sue him for doing so?

>It's interesting that a process can be
>patented.  Quite scarey in fact!  My understanding of indigenous cultural
>production, limited as it is, is that there is a processual dimension that
>figures in important ways - a concern with the process of production, for
>example, the constitutive relations, rather than the end product itself,
>as seen in the production of artworks, for example.

My understanding of patents is that it is _technical_ processes that 
can be patented, but not any other sort. Lee Strasbourg would not 
have been able to patent method acting, for example.

>Again, I will state my strong support of many of the
>practices of open source movements.  But I would maintain that there is
>danger that comes with such a movement in its rhetoric and *when* it
>assumes to have universal application.  The world is not a software
>program!  Some things need protection!  And there is a necessary
>restriction that comes with that.  And that is what my paper was
>discussing in part, Kermit and Miles.

Can you be specific about what form this would take? What sort of 
things should indigenous movements claim ownership over? How would 
they seek to use the law to restrict them? And who would they sue?
-- 

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net

_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold