The Legal Protection Of Folklore

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 al! 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, some groups from advance countries often collect folklore in some developing countries with rich folk literature and folk arts, and then put them into commercial practice just after a little modification. And what is worse is that 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.There are so many differences between folklore and common works that the legal manner of copyright law is insufficient. What is more, folklore may take many forms. So the latest trend is to make a new law which is independent of copyright law but similar to copyright law in some sense. For example, we can pass the Law of Protecting Folklore.Our country is bound with all kinds of folklore, of which we are proud, Folklore is our strong point. We should pay more attention to protecting folklore. At this point, we have the same standpoint with many developing countries. It is advisable to learn something from their experience in legislation and to have a deep insight into some international organizations' legislative achievements. Our present copyright law-establishes the principle of protecting folklore taking into account of the interest of our country. The law stipulates our State Department has the duty to formulate a pertaining ordinance to protect folklore. But till today such an ordinance still doesn't exist. Our actual safeguarding measures are mostly executive regulations. Some local governments have taken legal steps to tackle this problem. For example. Traditional and National Folklore Protection Regulation of Yunnan Province has been promulgated in Sep.1. 2000. which set a good example to our future national legislation.On the whole, this essay is composed of four parts except prologue and postscript:Part one analyses the conception and traits and protection significance of folklore, because scholars have not come to agreement. This part pays emphasis on the scope of folklore and its specialties, especially the differences between folklore and ordinary works. This part pays emphasis on why mainly analyzes us to have to protect the folk literature artresources. This part has expounded the present stage protection folk literatureart vital significance.Part two tells us that the international society how to protect folklore . Some developing countries and organizations have made some instructive attempts. International experiences adopts two kind of legislations protectedmode .We can use their experience for reference.Part three main analyses that our country how to protect situation folklore. Our country's protection legislation is more unitary to folklorem and the protective measures of folklore are quite diverse. In order to be advantageous for the research.the part main separately summarizes expounded from the view of our country three big legal systems angles.Part four focuses on our actual legislative status and future legislation. The lack of uniform pertaining law in the whole country led to many disputes in practice, which obliges us to special concerned law that protection of folklore. This part expounds the legislation conception.and prognosticates the legislative tenet, the legal relationship, the protective measures and the legal liability, expecting to benefit our future legislation concerned.