Digital Technologies and Traditional Cultural Expressions: A Positive Look at a Difficult Relationship

Digital technologies have often been perceived as imperilling traditional cultural expressions (TCE). This angst has interlinked technical and sociocultural dimensions. On the technical side, it is related to the affordances of digital media that allow instantaneous access to information without real location constraints, data transport at the speed of light and effortless reproduction of the original without any loss of quality. In a sociocultural context, digital technologies have been regarded as the epitome of globalization forces—not only driving and deepening the process of globalization itself but also spreading its effects. The present article examines the validity of these claims and sketches a number of ways in which digital technologies may act as benevolent factors. It illustrates in particular that some digital technologies can be instrumentalized to protect TCE forms, reflecting more appropriately the specificities of TCE as a complex process of creation of identity and culture. The article also seeks to reveal that digital technologies—and more specifically the Internet and the World Wide Web—have had a profound impact on the ways cultural content is created, disseminated, accessed and consumed. It is argued that this environment may have generated various opportunities for better accommodating TCE, especially in their dynamic sense of human creativit

The International Law of Culture: Prospects and Challenges: 23-25 May 2012, University of Göttingen, Germany

The international law of culture is a broad field, which certainly goes beyond the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as the international organization entrusted with, among other things, cultural affairs. Indeed, if one considers the far-reaching definition of culture, then a vast number of institutions, rules of hard and soft law, and initiatives of different scope and shape exist, and new ones come into being. This institutional complexity and the ensuing rule fragmentation are indicative of multiple scenes of contestation, denoted by different actors, politics, dynamics, and often strong path dependencies, which make meaningful communication between them and a solution-oriented forward thinking difficult. In scholarship, too, there appears to be increasing specialization, which carves out topics and subtopics, such as the UNESCO versus the World Trade Organization (WTO) clash, cultural heritage preservation, or indigenous peoples' rights. This may, despite the deeper knowledge won, hinder pinpointing appropriate regulatory responses at the international level, which could address cultural rights comprehensivel

The UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity: An Appraisal Five Years after Its Entry into Force

The Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions was agreed upon with an overwhelming majority and after the swiftest ratification process in the history of the UNESCO entered into force on 18 March 2007. Now, five years later and with some 130 Members committed to implementing the convention, not only observers with a particular interest in the topic but also the broader public may be eager to know what has happened and in how far has the implementation progress advanced. This is the question that animates this article. It seeks to answer it by giving a brief background to the UNESCO Convention, clarifying its legal status and impact, as well as by looking at the current implementation activities in domestic and international contexts. The article sets this analysis in the frame of international regime complexity insight

In der digitalen Welt die kulturelle Vielfalt schützen

Die Möglichkeiten, die sich in der digitalen Welt auftun, sind immens: Online können extrem schnell Informationen geholt und verbreitet werden. Die grossen Medienunternehmen überrollen den Markt. Eine Studie prüft, mit welchen Regeln die kulturelle Vielfalt erhalten werden kann

Global Trade Rules Access and Computational Law

Chapter 5 of the report "The promise of TradeTech: Policy approaches to harness trade digitalization". The report is co-published by the World Trade Organization and the World Economic Forum in April 2022 featuring WTI-affiliated drafters/coordinators, contributors, and reviewers (Jimena Sotelo, Craig Atkinson and Mira Burri). TradeTech - the set of technologies that enables global trade to become more efficient, inclusive and sustainable - plays an important role in easing the flow of goods across borders, reducing trade costs and creating new trade opportunities. This publication explores how international policy coordination, in particular the development of specific rules in trade agreements, could advance the adoption of digital technologies and trade digitalization across the world

Updating Cultural Law and Policy for the Digital Age

The chapter is an enquiry of the possibly failing or changed rationales of cultural protectionism in the digital age. It seeks to identify the adjustments needed, so that cultural policy could still serve its benevolent goals and effectively contribute to sustaining a cultural environment that is diverse and vibrant

The Trade Versus Culture Discourse: Tracing its Evolution in Global Law

The intensified flows of goods, services, peoples and ideas across borders intrinsic to globalization have had numerous and multi-faceted effects. Those affecting culture have been perhaps the most controversial, as it is more often than not difficult to identify the spill-overs across economic and non-economic areas and across borders, as it is equally hard to qualify the effects of these spill-overs as positive or negative. The debate also tends to be politically and even emotionally charged, which has so far not proven advantageous to establishing a genuine dialogue, nor to finding solutions. This contention and the divergent interests of major players in the international community have been reflected in the institutions and rules of global law. It is the objective of this chapter to explore this institutional architecture, in particular its main (and opposing) constituent fora of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations Educational Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The chapter traces the evolution of these institutions and their interaction over time, as well as the underlying objectives, demands and strategies of the key proponents in the trade versus culture discourse, which ultimately shaped the existent law and policy. The chapter concludes with an appraisal of the present state of affairs situating the discussion into the contemporary global governance landscape

Global Cultural Law and Policy in the Age of Ubiquitous Internet

Digital technologies and the Internet in particular have transformed the ways we create, distribute, use, reuse, and consume cultural content; have impacted the workings of the cultural industries, and more generally the processes of making, experiencing, and remembering culture in local and global spaces. Yet, few of these, often profound, transformations have found reflection in law and institutional design. Cultural policy toolkits, in particular at the international level, are still very much offline and analog and conceive of culture as static property linked to national sovereignty and state boundaries. The article describes this state of affairs and asks the key question of whether there is a need to reform global cultural law and policy and if yes, what the essential elements of such a reform should be. The article is informed by the ongoing and vibrant digital copyright and creativity discourse 1 but seeks to address also the less discussed, non-intellectual property tools of the cultural policy package. It thematizes the complexity and the interconnectedness of different fields of policymaking, as various decisions critical to cultural processes are made by institutions without cultural mandate. While this problem is not entirely new and is naturally triggered by the intrinsic duality of cultural goods and services, the article argues that the digital networked environment has only accentuated complexity, spillover effects, and unintended consequences. The question is how to navigate this newly created and profoundly fluid space, so as to ensure the preservation and sustainable provision of culture. The article hopes to contribute to the process of finding answers to this taxing question by identifying a few essential elements that need to be taken into consideration when designing future-oriented cultural polic