Bernard Woma case in Digital Democracy class
Up for debate today in the Digital Democracy
class on Indigenous Knowledge and IP law at HLS: Is it wrong for Avant Records to distribute for
profit in the United States the allegedly pirated sound
recording “Live at the Pito Bar,”
performed by Bernard Woma
in Ghana? The case gets to lots of
complex cross-border intellectual property questions, problems
associated with implied licenses, and the challenge of protecting
cultural heritage in the Internet era. Did the ethnomusicologist
who made this field recording, apparently with approval to use the
recording for academic purposes, do wrong by Mr. Woma, the master of
the Ghanaian Xylophone? How should disputes of this sort be
resolved, and by whom?
