Access to (Digital) Cultural Heritage as a Human Right?

拟议的研究旨在解决如何从人权的角度理解和规范对数字文化遗产的访问。该研究将探讨如何在数字时代解释和执行与文化遗产有关的人权法律措施，这反过来将为将数字文化遗产视为值得获得与实物文化遗产相同的关注和关注奠定基础。这种方法使研究人员能够探索数字技术和数字环境可能带来哪些新的机会和权利享受。为了缩小研究范围并展示其实践性和影响性维度，本研究将对博物馆在文化遗产馆藏数字化访问方面的实践进行实证检验。在人权背景下制定获取和所有权的框架，并使这些权利与数字时代保持一致，将有助于阐明监管政策的差距和不足，并有助于采取更具包容性的数字文化遗产管理措施，平衡各利益攸关方的相互竞争权利，并在开放获取文化遗产方面确保更广泛的公共利益。文化遗产的大规模数字化被认为是有益的和民主化的，因为通过在线收藏改善了公众的访问。然而，将实物数字副本的存在等同于可访问性是对数字文化遗产的狭隘理解，即能够在任何时间从任何地点获取信息，而无需亲自访问。矛盾的是，这种理解是基于一种模拟世界的思维方式，并没有满足数字时代的挑战和可能性，在这个时代，最关键的能力是公众下载、共享、使用和再利用信息的能力。为了克服这种狭隘的理解，机构采取了开放获取倡议，这些倡议通常基于知识产权制度，这与非西方社区的观点和传统文化表达中的社区权利本质上是矛盾的。此外，如果知识产权不能限制对数字文化遗产的获取和再利用，其他挑战就会被放大。这项研究将从人权的角度调查这些问题，从而获得全面和更平衡的观点。这使研究人员能够从国家、文化机构、民族群体和弱势社区的合法利益的角度来考虑数字文化遗产，目的是创造更公正的获取文化遗产的途径，从而为数字遗产的创造、管理和参与提供更包容的框架。该研究将对有关获取文化遗产的国际和国家人权立法进行文献审查和理论分析，以确定它们如何适用于数字文化遗产。在此之后，基于桌面的研究将使用实证方法收集博物馆在获取数字遗产方面的做法、规则和政策的定量和定性数据。“数字贝宁”和“其他奈费尔蒂蒂”等项目将作为案例研究进行批判性分析，从试图通过数字干预获取文化遗产和恢复原籍社区自决权等权利的角度进行分析。此外，通过对俄罗斯帝国主义剥夺的文化遗产及其被俄罗斯博物馆数字化的比较分析，物体的位置和以数字格式表达的信息的所有权，将告知如何使用拟议的人权方法来解决当代的不平等和认知暴力。这项研究将提供必要的法律和实践背景，以支持新的监管和遗产管理工具，以更灵活、道德和包容地获取数字遗产。

The proposed research aims to tackle how access to digital cultural heritage should be understood and regulated from a human rights perspective. The research will explore how human rights legal measures related to cultural heritage can be interpreted and enforced in the digital age, which in turn will establish grounds for treating digital cultural heritage as worthy of receiving the same care and attention paid to physical cultural heritage. Such an approach allows the researcher to explore what new opportunities and rights enjoyments are made possible by digital technologies and digital environments. To narrow the research scope and demonstrate its practical and impact-focused dimensions, the study will undertake an empirical examination of museum practices on digital access to cultural heritage collections. Framing access and ownership within a human rights context and bringing those rights in line with the digital age will help illuminate gaps and shortcomings of regulatory policies and where more inclusive measures for digital cultural heritage management can balance the competing rights of various stakeholders, as well as secure wider public interests in open access to cultural heritage. The mass digitisation of cultural heritage is perceived as both beneficial and democratising due to improving public access through online collections. However, the existence of a digital copy of a physical object is equated with accessibility is a narrow understanding of digital cultural heritage as the ability to obtain information from any place at any time without requiring a physical visit. Paradoxically, this understanding is based on an analogue-world mindset and does not meet the challenges and possibilities of the digital age where the most crucial ability is the public's ability to download, share, use and re-use the information. To overcome this narrow understanding, institutions adopt open access initiatives, which are commonly based on intellectual property systems that are inherently contradictory to perspectives of non-western communities and community rights in traditional cultural expressions. Moreover, when intellectual property rights do not arise to limit access to and reuse of digital cultural heritage, other challenges are amplified. The research will investigate the questions through a human rights lens, which allows for a holistic and more balanced view. This enables the researcher to consider digital cultural heritage from the perspective of the legitimate interests of states, cultural institutions, ethnic groups, and vulnerable communities with the aim of creating a more just route to accessing cultural heritage and thereby more inclusive frameworks to digital heritage creation, management and engagement. The research will undertake a literature review and doctrinal analysis of international and national human rights legislation on access to cultural heritage to identify how they might apply to digital cultural heritage. Following this, desk-based research using empirical methods will gather quantitative and qualitative data on museum practices, rules, and policies on access to digital heritage. Projects like "Digital Benin" and "Other Nefertiti" will be critically analysed as case studies from the perspective of attempts to access cultural heritage and restore rights, such as self-determination, to communities of origin through digital interventions. Moreover, the comparative analysis with cultural heritage dispossessed through Russian imperialism and their digitisation by Russian museums, the location of the objects and ownership over information expressed in the digital format, will inform how the proposed human rights approach can be used to resolve the contemporary inequities and epistemic violence. This research will provide the legal and practical background necessary to support new regulatory and heritage management tools for more flexible, ethical and inclusive access to digital heritage.