SIVACRACY.NET

Global Cultural Policy
Nobody debates “US Cultural Policy”
Yet “culture” is clearly crucial
Global cultural policy is debated globally, but citizens and NGOs have little power
Sites: UNESCO, WIPO, WTO

Right to Culture
The "right to culture" has been a key foundation of cultural policy. In 1948, soon after the United Nations was established, its members declared a "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" which asserted that ”Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community.”

The Global System
The trade system (WTO, NAFTA, FTAA, etc.)
The policy/grant system (UNESCO, World Bank, foundations)
The Copyright System (for lack of a better name)
Not just a regulatory/legal concept
Complex interactions among market dynamics, non-market behaviors, regulatory systems, law, norms, habits, ideologies, cultural capital, social capital, architecture
Actors include publishers, users, regulators, volunteers, rebels, mediators

Disequilibrium
Equilibrium in the copyright system is anomalous
Disequilibrium is the norm over 3000 years
Yet disequilibrium is perhaps more pronounced now than any time in the past 200 years
No one is happy

The Stakes of Disequilibrium
Stakes are higher -- copyrights are the most valuable U.S. export
System is more dispersed and decentralized -- communicative technologies put power at the endpoints of the system
Emergence of global and powerfully connected nodes and endpoints (markets, Diasporic communities, political movements, religious sects, criminal syndicates, etc.)
Local/Indigenous/Traditional Knowledge challenged under threats of global tidal wave

Nobody is Happy
Global connectivity is uncomfortable or for many interests -- “connective anxieties”
Enforcement is harder than ever before
Norms breaking down (if they ever existed)
Basic democratic safeguards threatened
Copyright holders have persuaded policy makers to strengthen the legal regime in new and powerful ways
Digital regulations (Digital Millennium Copyright Act, European Copyright Directive, trade agreements etc.)
Global standardization (WIPO, TRIPS)

Trying to Rule
All parties are trying to establish equilibrium on their own terms
Sides deeply fear the others’ terms of equilibrium
Therefore, no equilibrium in sight
In fact, energized, motivated conflicting interests seem to prevent any establishment of equilibrium
Until all parties agree on principles and mutual respect of interests and stakes, no equilibrium is possible

Remote Control
United States government (at the behest of its copyright industries) is trying to embed its values in the very communicative technologies that have lowered the costs of and barriers to entry.

“Electronic Cultural Policy”
DMCA, Digital Broadcast Flag, “Induce Act”
Local/Traditional Knowledge
Would recognition of communal knowledge demand a new matrix of rights? A sui generis intellectual property right?

Goal: dignity and respect
But “Commons” and “Public Domain” are not satisfying concepts to those in a weaker positions in global culture markets.

Problems with Group Rights
Membership not always clear
Groups, not individuals, must act according to liberal individualistic ideologies -- “possesive individualism” becomes “possesive groupism.”
Corruption and exclusion -- who owns Koran? Saffron? Ram? Swastika?
Rights are alienable, licenseable, exploitable
More rights over more rights might freeze or calcify culture -- culture is sharing, revision, Creolization

Developing Nations and Cultural Policy
Less space for national cultural policy -- constrained by US, WIPO, WTO, etc.

Incubating infrastructure for cultural industries only allowed for “frozen cultures” and tourism
UNESCO and the Nubians
Can’t follow protectionist models of US, UK, etc.
Can’t invest in public media -- Netherlands and Public Service Broadcasting

Open Societies Under Pressure
Corporatism and enclosure
State corruption
Group rights claims
Tragedies of the commons
Tragedies of the anti-commons
Anarchism -- too much openness, not enough society?

Culture is Gumbo
To be cultural is to share
To add to culture is to mix, mash, review, and revise
To be cultural is to be human