Commentary on Michael Brown's 'Can Culture Be Copyrighted?'
39 Current Anthropology 207-209, 1998
31 Pages Posted: 8 Jul 2014
Date Written: 1998
Abstract
Michael Brown's “Can Culture Be Copyright?” addresses several issues related to the ethical dilemmas around using intellectual property to promote cultural self-determination. Intellectual property might provide the legal tools to protect traditional knowledges. In a brief response to Brown’s article, I argue that debates around intellectual property are neither sufficiently careful in their articulation of the law nor are they ethnographically sensitive to the contexts in which intellectual property assertions arise out of rhetorical claims.
Keywords: Copyright, Culture, Intellectual property
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