Cinnabar and Alabaster

passages
947. "experience suggests that our creative practices are largely derivative, generally collective, and increasingly corporate or collaborative. yet we continue to think of genuine authorship as solitary and originary."
948. "with its emphasis on originality and self-declaring creative genius, this notion of authorship has functioned to marginalize or deny the work of many creative people: women, non-europeans, artists working in traditional forms and genres, and individuals engaged in group or collaborative projects, to name but a few"..."so it should not surprise us to learn that [intellectual property law] tends to reward certain producers and their creative products while devaluing others."
949. by definition as "cultural," "cultural production necessarily draws upon previously creative accomplishments."
950. wordsworth was full of it: "i wandered lonely as a cloud" isn't even true; dorothy was there on the walk & wrote about it too; perhaps they even co-wrote the poem's final verses.
952. "today this process of authorial appropriation can produce even more extreme results: a modern-day dorothy would run the risk of being charged (albeit erroneously) with infringement of william's copyright for publishing her prior prose description of the daffodils."
958-9. "article i of the 1971 act of the berne convention (like its prototype in the original act of 1886) provides that 'the countries to which this convention applies constitute a union for the protection of the rights of authors in their literary and artistic works"; TRIPs in 1993 adds more detail especially to such newer concerns as "computer programs, whether in source or object code," which "shall be protected as literary works under the berne convention"; "the TRIPs agreement also indicates that 'compilations of data or other material, whether in machine readable or other form, which by reason of the selection or arrangement of their contents constitute intellectual creations, shall be protected as such"
962. "crazy horse" as a new jersey company's beer brand--the lakota sioux are (understandably!) displeased, & his descendants "have filed an action in lakota tribal court assserting, in various claims under tribal law, two claims based on 'anglo' theories of recovery from outside the mainstream of intellectual property: defamation and infringement of the 'right of publicitity' (the latter more often mobilized against unauthorized impersonators of celebrities like elvis and madonna)"--in part, these outlier claims are b/c "indigenous peoples' efforts to deploy mainstream intellectual property law to control the exploitation of their heritage are generally unavailing"
966. at the "1992 convention on biological diversity," in response to questions about the healing properties of certain locales' indigenous plants, "signatory countries agreed to 'share in a fair and equitable way the results of research and development and the benefits arising from the commercial and other utilization of genetic resources.' thus the treaty emphasizes national rights rather than the interests of peoples. moreover, it conceptualizes 'genetic resources' as raw materials like coal or mineral deposits rather than as properties of the mind."
968. again, the good stuff: "the healing forest conservancy, a nonprofit foundation established by shaman" industries & their "model of intellectual property" which "treats traditional knowledge as a source of value rather than as a kind of raw material to which value must be added" AND "in doing so it does not seek to recast the bioknowledge of indigenous peoples in the mold of 'authorship' or 'invention': it emphasizes collective rather than individual entitlement"
969. more good stuff: the 1993 bellagio declaration, which "called for experimentation with 'special regimes'--based on, but not identical to, those of western intellectual property law--for the protection of 'folkloric works,' 'works of cultural heritage,' and 'the biological and ecological "know-how" of traditional peoples.'"
970. conclusion: "ultimately, it may prove impossible--or unfruitful--to reshape intellectual property law so as to incorporate new kinds of rights and new categories of owners. rather than refiguring traditional knowledge as the product of solitary, originary genius, we may have to reimagine the familiar subject matter of western intellectual property as the outcome of collective, collaborative social activity."

more from the bellagio declaration
971. "intellectual property laws have profound effects on issues as disparate as scientific and artistic progress, biodiversity, access to information, and the cultures of indigenous and tribal peoples."
972. "many of these problems are build into the basic structure and assumptions of intellectual property"; "a system based on such premeses has real, negative consequences. increasingly, traditional knowledge, folklore, genetic material and native medical knowledge flor out of their countries of origin unprotected by intellectual property, while works from developed countries flow in, well protected by international intellectual agreements, backed by the threat of trade sanctions"; "in general, systems build around the author paradigm tend to obscure or undervalue the importance of 'the public domain,' the intellectual and cultural commons from whcih future works will be constructed"; "these tendencies" are "not merely unjust but unwise."