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Author Scafidi, Susan, 1968- author.

Title Who owns culture? : appropriation and authenticity in American law / Susan Scafidi
Published New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, ©2005

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Description 1 online resource (xiv, 203 pages)
Series Rutgers series on the public life of the arts
Rutgers series on the public life of the arts.
Contents The commodification of culture -- Ownership of intagible property -- Cultural products as accidental property -- Categorizing cultural products -- Claiming community ownership via authenticity -- Family feuds -- Outsider appropriation -- Misappropriation and the destruction of value(s) -- Permissive appropriation -- Reverse appropriation of intellectual properties and celebrity personae -- Civic role of cultural products -- An emerging legal framework
Summary Annotation It is not uncommon for white suburban youths to perform rap music, for New York fashion designers to ransack the world's closets for inspiration, or for Euro-American authors to adopt the voice of a geisha or shaman. But who really owns these art forms? Is it the community in which they were originally generated, or the culture that has absorbed them? While claims of authenticity or quality may prompt some consumers to seek cultural products at their source, the communities of origin are generally unable to exclude copyists through legal action. Like other works of unincorporated group authorship, cultural products lack protection under our system of intellectual property law. But is this legal vacuum an injustice, the lifeblood of American culture, a historical oversight, a result of administrative incapacity, or all of the above? Who Owns Culture? offers the first comprehensive analysis of cultural authorship and appropriation within American law. From indigenous art to Linux, Susan Scafidi takes the reader on a tour of the no-man's-land between law and culture, pausing to ask: What prompts us to offer legal protection to works of literature, but not folklore? What does it mean for a creation to belong to a community, especially a diffuse or fractured one? And is our national culture the product of Yankee ingenuity or cultural kleptomania? Providing new insights to communal authorship, cultural appropriation, intellectual property law, and the formation of American culture, this innovative and accessible guide greatly enriches future legal understanding of cultural production
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 163-188) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Intellectual property -- United States
Material culture -- United States
Folklore -- United States.
Culture and law
Indigenous peoples -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- United States
LAW -- Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice.
Culture and law
Folklore
Indigenous peoples -- Legal status, laws, etc.
Intellectual property
Material culture
United States
Form Electronic book
ISBN 0813537851
9780813537856
9780813536057
0813536057
9780813536064
0813536065
1280462884
9781280462887
9786610462889
6610462887