The problems of owning culture: global intellectual property law and ‘traditional’ community arts in Indonesia

Abstract

In our digital age when most movies viewed at home carry Interpol warnings that copyright piracy is a crime, yet patented medicines are unaffordable for millions, ethical debates about intellectual property rights and freedom of information are becoming widespread. But a less noticed topic in these debates is the recent international effort to expand and implement Euro-American models of intellectual property law among peoples whose daily activities previously have not been covered by formal intellectual property laws (primarily copyright, patent, and trademark regulations). This essay considers how this trend is unfolding in post-Suharto Indonesia, particularly the tension between national efforts to create legal property rights over cultural resources and the fact that most ordinary Indonesians do not view their cultural knowledge and aesthetic or ritual activities as property to be claimed in an exclusive way by their ethnic group or government. Plans to legalize the cultural ownership of regional arts are addressed with ethnographic examples from Indonesian fieldwork including 2005–07 visits conducted by an international team of lawyers, musicologists, anthropologists, and Indonesian community activists with ‘traditional’ arts producers from eleven cultural regions in eight provinces.