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Ethnomusicology
COPYRIGHT AND FOLKLORE
Author:
City
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Baku
Country :
Azerbaijan
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(iii) adopt the necessary measures to safeguard the materials gathered against misuse, whether intentional or otherwise;
(iv) recognize the responsibility of archives to monitor the use made of the materials gathered.
Thus the informant, the collector, the folklore document itself and the folklore archive holding the document should be protected and supported in order to guarantee the responsible use of folklore. Here the focus of protection shifts in fact to tangible objects, the documents containing folklore, be they written, audial or visual. This opens up a pragmatic vista on copyright and folklore, because the works to be protected are not immaterial spiritual phenomena in the minds of people but tangible objects conserving human ideas and expressions. The folklore archive may be said to assume the role of «competent authority» discussed above. The authorisation of use must be sought at the source of folklore performance, the informant, as well as at the source of its documentation, the collector. Both have individual rights concerning particular materials. The folklore archive should monitor their rights and the forms of folklore dissemination in general.
This last constellation of protection is in harmony with the existing infrastructures of folklore work. It need not remain hypothetical but can be written into archival codes and research contracts even regardless of whether certain international treaties have been ratified or not. In many cases the performer of folklore passes for an artist and may receive recognition as an author, not of folklore as such, but of his unique interpretation and performance of it. Without the collector, however, that performance would have disappeared without trace. So he may be respected as a co-author of folklore.
The folklore document thus created will lead a life of its own which is secondary compared to the original folklore process from which it was derived. Yet it lends the indispensable possibility of reviewing culture to future generations. Thus it must be protected as the container of inexhaustible cultural values. The folklore archive, in turn, lends institutional authority to folklore documents and provides for technical competence and judicial arbitration in matters of folklore protection and use. If there is any kind of royalty generated by folklore materials, it is the folklore archive which should be able to channel the funds to the rightful source, be it the performer, the traditional community, the collector or some institution, including the folklore archive itself.
The «competent authority»
Let me conclude with an anecdote. A scholar wrote to me recently saying that he had worked for several years on a database of 11,000 regional folk tales now ready to be displayed on the Internet. He had consulted lawyers about the copyright concerning the individual tales. The answer was that «every narrator is the owner of his or her recorded performance» and that the publisher should acquire permission for each tale from its narrator, if he is still alive, and if not, from the next of kin if less than 70 years have passed since his death. The scholar, envisioning the difficulties involved, was uncertain whether he could realise his plan of putting his database on the World Wide Web at all.
Here again, the folklore archive holding the materials and acting as the «competent authority» could take the responsibility of granting permission after judging the rights of not only the storytellers but the collectors and other shareholders of folklore ownership as well. In other words, a well-functioning and clearly coded infrastructure represents the best guarantee for the enforcement of copyright and other rights actualised through the secondary use of expressions of folklore.
Qap olunmus. yaziyla INTERNET-de tarns olmaq olar. Unvan:
http://www.folklore-fellows.org/netw/ffn21/ copyright.html
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