I think that when I think about copyright, the way I view it is a person trying to pass off someone else’s work as their own and profit from it, or take an idea, for example Mickey Mouse and create merch out of it and profit from it. I think in that situation the original owner can take legal action. Obviously Disney won’t feel the effects as much since it’s a multi-million dollar company but smaller companies do feel the effects when someone steals their idea. However if a person uses someone else’s property as inspiration and creates something different then the original owner can’t do anything about it because all their work was used for, was inspiration.

I do not think culture should be treated as property, in most cases. People don’t own culture; they may be part of a culture but they didn’t create it. It’s art, beliefs, traditions, ideas, etc., passed down throughout the generations and large groups of people share the same or similar culture. Culture is meant to be shared and experienced by many different people and it’s meant to be appreciated. It’s like saying, you can’t celebrate Christmas because I celebrate Christmas and since my family’s been doing it longer than you, it belongs to me. Obviously it’s not as simple as that, and that example was just to get my point across but that’s how it sounds when people say that culture belongs to groups of people and nobody else can participate. (Also this conversation is usually about some kind of religious object or a certain clothing piece specific to a group and I don’t mean to diminish the seriousness of this topic by using Christmas as an example it was just the first thing that came to mind that most people would understand.) I think stealing things from other cultures is not ok. There is a huge difference between cultural appropriation and appreciation. I think when people come from a place of respect and curiosity and admiration and enjoy something from a specific culture and recognize and embrace the differences of different cultures, it’s ok. Not to steal something, but participate in something from that culture. But if it’s coming from a place of actually stealing ideas to make money or to make a mockery of something that is valued and respected in someone’s culture then that’s not ok and in that case something should be done about it. Also there are a lot more complicated things in regards to this and if I got into all of that this blog post would be like 5000 words long. Also this is about culture being property, and the conversation for what is culture and the difference between appreciation and appropriation kind of goes hand in hand with culture being treated as property.