Legal Protection Of Folklore In Our Country

The problem of protecting folklore can be dated back to long time ago, but it is still a controversial issue world wide. In some sense. Folklore is kind of the common heritage of all human being. Unlike other intellectual property,folklore has no definite owner. No one dare say he makes promethean contribution to folklore. As a result, some countries, especially some advanced ones, claim that folklore is the common wealth of all human being. So in their opinion, everyone has the right to make use of folklore freely, and any measures to protect folklore are not proper. Based on such a prostitution, developing some groups from developed countries often collect folklore in some countries with rich folk literature and folk arts, and then put them into commercial practice just after a little modification. And what is worse they often distort folklore just according to their illiberal understanding ignoring the feeling of indigenous communities. On the contrary, many developing countries have made some relating laws and set up the principle of protecting folklore with different widths and degrees. This issue also drew down attention from some international organizations and resulted in some beneficial and tentative legislation.As China is a country of history of thousands of years, various nationalities and rich cultural tradition, many types of folklore have been handed down from the past. Reinforcing the protection of the folklore of our country will play an important role in prolonging the folklore of various region of our country, and meanwhile make the folklore play a part in the development of our country at present and in the future. However, though Traditional National and Folk Culture Protection Regulation of Yunnan Province promulgated in Sep. 1,2000, a national folklore protection law has not been formulated up to now. To carry out deep and thorough studies on the protection of the intellectual property of the folklore will have great significance in setting up the legal system of protecting the folklore. First of all, through the analysis of the existing forms of the folklore, by using the legislative system of other countries and the international organizations for reference, the thesis summarizes the ways and significance of protecting the folklore in our country,at last, by analyzing some concrete problems and stating his own ideas, the author intends to make the scholars and legislative body pay emphasis on the protection of the folklore, to lay a foundation for setting up a Chinese-characterized legal system of protecting the folklore and to make the protection of the folklore become the common learning of our nation during the process of modernization of our country.In addition to the introduction and the conclusion, the thesis consists of four other parts:Part one deals with the definition and features of the existing forms of the folklore of our country. The author puts forward what the folklore refers to after studying the understanding of the folklore of the people of other countries, and the features.Part two introduces the necessity of protecting the folklore.Part three introduces the present condition and the legislative condition of protecting the folklore in other countries and some international organizations, illustrates the relevant administrative and legal measures of protecting the folklore adopted in our country.Part four is the innovative point of the thesis. In this part, the author put forward the feasibility of formulating a folklore protection law in our country, states its legislative aim and principle,the range of protection, the subject of the right, the object of the right, and the contents of the right, analyze the possible forms of the infringement of the folklore from the practice of lawsuits, and point out the civil, administrative and legal responsibility born when infringement of the folklore happens.