Who Owns the Orphans? Traditional and Digital Property in Visual Art

该项目调查在法律、商业和习惯做法的背景下，对传统和数字媒体所表达的不可归因性或被遗弃的视觉艺术(孤儿作品)的管理。知识产权法和文化法规定了社会和政府给予有记录和未记录的视觉艺术的“作者和所有者”文化和商业价值和认可的方式。虽然著作权的法律概念支配着商业实践，但与没有“作者”的传统文化表达方式相比，没有连贯的法律景观。事实上，目前对视觉艺术，特别是文化表现形式的所有权的法律规定是否反映了两个在视觉艺术中拥有大量既得利益的重要群体的信仰和做法，几乎没有政策评估。第一个群体是土著和族裔社区，他们将视觉艺术视为其传统文化表现形式的一部分。传统文化表现形式包括各种价值观、传统、信仰、知识、艺术表现形式以及源自世界各地土著和其他社区的产品。这种表达通常采取行动表达的形式，或视觉表达、言语表达或音乐表达的形式。在过去的几年里，种族趋势与当今的数字文化相结合，促使传统文化表现形式的商业性和非商业性开发和品牌显著增加。传统的图像或物体越来越多地被用来给产品、人物、社区、公司和学科打上品牌。例如，土著艺术被复制到地毯、T恤和贺卡上，土著形象被注册为商标并在商业上使用，传统设计被名人作为纹身佩戴。这些做法引发了所有权、授权和剥削的问题。此外，土著和族裔群体不仅培育和保护传统知识，而且根据他们的环境以及他们与自然和历史的互动，通过不断地重新创造、重新解释和调整早期的表现形式，创造传统但当代的艺术。土著和族裔社区认为，这些当代表达方式识别和反映了他们的价值观、传统和信仰，因此属于他们所有，属于共同责任、身份和监护权的共同意识，这与倾向于关注个人的西方财产理论相冲突。然而，这种对个人的关注是自相矛盾的。一方面，西方法院利用著作权法和人权法禁止艺术家对现有艺术作品的图像进行恶搞，因为这种做法是“贬低作品的伦理”，并诋毁原始作品作者的完整性。第二个群体以视觉艺术产业为代表，他们将视觉艺术视为一种完成的商业商品，在艺术和文化市场上进行分配和交易。视觉艺术利润的估价、开发和分享在很大程度上取决于作品的出处、作者和/或所有权。作品的数字化增加了另一个维度，因为它增加了作品的曝光率和盈利能力，并确保全球范围内接触到人类丰富的文化。博物馆、图书馆和档案馆有几项举措来创建这样的数字收藏品。然而，如果作品在法律上被归类为没有作者，商业政策通常会要求从公共访问、展览和在线数字图书馆中删除图像，以最大限度地减少这些机构的行政、法律和经济责任。这一领域的非归属或遗弃的视觉艺术作品，即‘孤儿作品’，将是研究的重点。

The project investigates the regulation of non-attributable or abandoned visual art (orphan works), as expressed by traditional and digital media, within the context of legal, business and customary practices. Intellectual property and cultural laws govern the manner in which society and governments accord cultural and business value and recognition to 'authors and owners' of recorded and non-recorded visual art. While the legal notion of authorship dictates business practice, there is no coherent legal landscape in relation to traditional cultural expressions which have no 'author'. Indeed, there has been little policy assessment of whether the current legal regulation of ownership of visual art, especially cultural expressions, reflects the beliefs and practices of two important communities which hold substantial vested interests in visual arts. The first group is the indigenous and ethnic community who view visual art as part of their traditional cultural expressions. Traditional cultural expressions encompass a wide variety of values, traditions, beliefs, knowledge, forms of artistic expressions, and products that originate from indigenous and other communities throughout the world. Such expressions usually take the form of expressions by action, or visual expressions, verbal expressions or musical expressions. Over the past few years, ethnicity trends combined with today's digital culture have prompted a significant increase in both the commercial and non-commercial exploitation and branding of traditional cultural expressions. Traditional images or objects are increasingly being used to brand products, people, communities, corporations, and disciplines. Examples include indigenous art being copied onto carpets, T-shirts and greeting cards, indigenous images being registered as trade marks and used commercially, and traditional designs being worn as tattoos by celebrities. These practices raise issues of ownership, authorisation and exploitation. Moreover, indigenous and ethnic groups not only cultivate and preserve traditional knowledge but also create traditional but contemporary art by constantly recreating, reinterpreting and adapting earlier forms of expressions, in response to their environment and their interaction with nature and their history. These contemporary expressions are regarded by indigenous and ethnic communities as identifying and reflecting their values, traditions and beliefs, and thus as being owned by them and falling within a shared sense of communal responsibility, identity, and custodianship, which conflicts with Western property theories that tend to focus on the individual. This focus on the individual, however, is paradoxical. On the one hand, Western courts employ copyright and human rights laws to ban artists from parodying images of existing art works as such practices 'denature the ethic of the work', and denigrate the integrity of the author of the original work. The second group is represented by the visual art industry who view visual art as a finished business commodity to be distributed and traded in the art and cultural market. The valuation, exploitation and sharing of profits of the visual art is highly dependent on the provenance, authorship and/or ownership of the work. Digitisation of a work adds a further dimension as it increases the exposure and the earning capacity of a work, and ensures global access to humanity's rich culture. There are several initiatives by museums, libraries and archives to create such digital collections. However, if the work is classified legally as having no author, business policy often dictates the removal of images from public access, exhibitions and on-line digital libraries in order to minimise the administrative, legal and financial liability of these institutions. This area of non-attributable or abandoned works of visual art i.e. 'orphan works", will be the focus of the research.