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From Cultural Property to Cultural Data: The Multiple Dimensions of “Ownership” in a Global Digital Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2014

Neil Asher Silberman
Neil Asher Silberman*
Affiliation:
Center for Heritage and Society, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract:

The global digital environment and the continuous expansion of digital information about cultural property necessitate a reevaluation of John Henry Merryman’s tripartite typology of cultural property ideals. Merryman put forth those ideals, namely 1.) ensuring the physical preservation of cultural property, 2.) protecting its even-handed interpretation, and 3.) offering public access to cultural property, as the main bases for the settlement of international cultural property disputes. However, new questions have arisen about the status of cultural property in an era when detailed virtual copies of cultural property are instantaneously available. For example, to what extent is digitized cultural property data should itself be regarded as cultural property? This paper will address some of the ethical issues related to the physical preservation, interpretation, and access to this digitized cultural property data. It will conclude with an examination of another type of cultural heritage data: the increasing use of behavioral data about cultural property consumers and audiences as a marketing tool by cultural institutions. This ominous new turn in the commodification of cultural property, it will be suggested, identifies items of cultural significance not only as objects of ownership and sale, but also as a marketable entertainment experience.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 21 , Issue 3: SPECIAL ISSUE: Thinking About Cultural Property: The Legal and Public Policy Legacies of John Henry Merryman , August 2014 , pp. 365 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © International Cultural Property Society 2014 

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