The question of who owns creative expressions has been a brain-buster for centuries now. Thomas Jefferson struggled with it in the early days of the United States, as did his lofty peers. The high-speed transmission of the Internet and my cheesy little photocopy machine have just made matters worse.
Two articles rehash the troubles in two very different ways. This piece in U.S. News struggles with who owns cultural artifacts…museums or the countries/cultures that created them. Meanwhile, the Durham Independent looks at copyright and the collapse of the public domain, suggesting that “copyright laws are stifling art, but the public domain can save us.”
Despite their different angles, both articles juggle the same issues: How can we respect the creators of expressive works (with exclusive ownership in the case of copyright, and with cultural heritage in the case of museums), but still maintain a rich and vibrant access to those works to inform future expressions?
