>They do? How do you "own" cultural heritage? Well, the most obvious route is the legal one. Lots of cultures have legislation protecting the authenticity of c

>They do? How do you "own" cultural heritage? Well, the most obvious route is the legal one. Lots of cultures have legislation protecting the authenticity of certain kinds of products, like food - even if those products can be reproduced exactly elsewhere. You are not allowed to call your homemade cheese "parmigiano", no matter its quality or ingredients, because the recipe is "owned" by the cheesemakers of an area around Parma. There's even information ownership in fields which are ostensibly about physical things. Museums are full of objects whose historical value comes from the information they provide about the past - and in many places, that information is considered important enough for people to go to great lengths to make it available to the public. Countries often ban the export of historical artifacts, because it is felt that the public "own" the artifacts and the knowledge they can communicate.