Friday, March 11, 2005

Copyright case may conclude with public burning

Native American Times has a story on an interesting copyright case out in California. According the article, permission was given by an elder, who has since died, to allow the recording of sacred ceremonies. However, there was no permission given for those recordings to be disseminated. An out-of-court settlement was reach and the tapes were returned to the tribe. Now those types may be destroyed (burned) in a public ceremony.

The article notes that "the majority of the people that bought the tapes and CDs were Me-Wuk Indians interested in learning more about their history." Let's hope that the Me-Wuk will work to create works that can legally be disseminated so that their members can learn and preserve their history.

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