culture Archives - Page 13 of 13 - imaginary magnitude

I once watched a PBS-televised lecture featuring writer Clifford Stoll. He wrote one of the first true-life hacker books, called The Cookoo’s Egg (ISBN: 0671-72688-9), about his efforts to track a “telnet” hacker who was using the Berkeley University server hub as a means to tap into the Department of Defense. A very, very good book.

In the lecture he was discussing copyright issues and how it is becoming harder and harder for people to express themselves due to large corporations buying-up the rights and then registering patents for everything from Mickey Mouse to mere phrases/ideas written on cocktail napkins. He said the following (note: I’m paraphrasing due to the fact that it was over 5 years ago that I watched it):

“If we had the same copyright protection rules historically that we have now, you know who the richest people on Earth would be? The League of Greek Mathematicians; because every time you used the Pythagorean Theorem you would have to pay a fee.“

I cannot have chosen a better way to convey how utterly stupid and self-destructive the current copyright laws have become. I’m not arguing against someone protecting the fruits of their invention, however I neither support legally protecting a concept nor extending the patent protecting an invention for more than a reasonable fixed period of time. Historically the reason for patenting an invention was so that the originating inventor would have unabated means (in the marketplace) to collect the rewards of their work/investment – but it wasn’t meant to last forever.

Strangely, this was thwarted by a man who will probably go down in history as “Cher’s first husband”, Sonny Bono. He involved himself in politics and fought (until his death) to extend copyrights indefinitely. One can only speculate that he was concerned “I Got You Babe” wouldn’t net him any more proceeds. Details of this law (amended and passed) are here.

My reasoning is this: the evolution of an idea is often the result of a collaboration of thinkers over a long period of time. When the Principia Mathematica was published, Sir Isaac Newton – when asked about his breakthrough idea of gravity – said that he was only “standing on the shoulders of giants”, namely the likes of Galileo, Kepler, and Copernicus: those who had come before him and provided the necessary groundwork to provide Newton with the tools to complete the picture.

The current environment is simply bad capitalism: dramatically limiting competition and the free evolution of ideas for short term profit. Sad.

An interesting article on The Guardian today highlights an interesting question regarding cultural protectionism.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1734778,00.html?gusrc=rss

Excerpt:

Ministry bans export of Spanish writer’s manuscripts

Dale Fuchs in Madrid
Monday March 20, 2006
The Guardian

Signed manuscripts by one of Spain’s most influential novelists and philosophers of the 20th century, Miguel de Unamuno, have been declared “not for export” by the culture ministry, days before they were due to auctioned in Madrid.

The decision is part of a mounting effort to keep Spanish cultural treasures at home and follows a move earlier this month to get Interpol to prevent the sale of five 10th-century wooden beams from the historic Great Mosque of Cordoba.

On March 27, the Sala Durán auction house in Madrid plans to sell nine lots of letters and other documents by Unamuno, the author of Fog, Abel Sánchez and Teresa, some of them written during his exile from 1926 to 1930 in the Canary Islands and Paris, during the dictatorship of Primo Rivera. Other letters up for sale were written to his wife, children and other intellectuals and writers of his times, such as the poet Rubén Darío.

News of the sale, however, sounded the alarm at the culture ministry. It said it had declared the Unamuno manuscripts off limits to foreign buyers as “a cautionary measure” to “guarantee this assembly of extraordinary interest for Spain’s documental heritage” remains in the country.

It is the first in what will be a series of legal measures to preserve Spain’s cultural patrimony, the statement said. The Sala Durán told Spanish news agencies the auction would proceed as planned.

An interesting predicament (and I’d be curious to have people who live in Spain give more context to this). I suppose the chief conflict is whether cultural artifacts/icons should be freely subject to export or mandated to remain in-country. Although it isn’t clear who would be bidding on the works of de Unamuno (private sale, museum, university, etc.), there is a strong argument that by allowing fragments of ones heritage to be exported you are also exporting articles of cultural identity which could arguably serve a greater good via public access in an international setting (again, assuming the auction tilts towards public institutions). The world would be allowed to understand aspects of Spain’s culture that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to when these elements are available to them.

One of the problems with cultural protectionism is that the benefits tend to be short-term; if you refuse to allow cultural artifacts to be exported then you deny your culture a necessary life. Culture can neither be created nor destroyed by man; it is an ecosystem unto itself. Logically then, if you close the free export of culture (and I understand there may be very persuasive arguments for holding back) you are effectively cutting off a vine which should necessarily thrive unheeded. I generally feel that the only cultures which require protection are extinct/demised cultures – the Aztecs, for example. There is no way for the remnants of their culture to thrive without artificial means, thus it makes sense to take a protectionist stance.

My question is thus: what is the state of Spanish culture? Is there a need for protectionism? Am I totally off-base (probably)? Has Spanish culture, like Egyptian, been raided by foreign interests?

Have your say below…

Category: culture

CopyWrong

Context: cultural protectionism vs. indigenous identity