If significant parts of a nation's culture are created and owned by corporations, instead of created by individual artists and intellectuals, is it still culture?

Isn't a country's culture just it's shared experience and history? Why should the ownership or origin have any impact of the validity of that culture? If the people of that country have a shared belief and understanding, a common experience of a particular aspect of the culture, does that not validate it being part of the culture? The Big Mac or the Marlboro cigarette are both part of the US cultural experience despite them being commercial products.

From - http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/culture Culture is defined as "the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group: the youth culture;the drug culture." Culture is not "owned".  Disney does not own the concept of " clean family entertainment", more than the drug cartels own "getting high".  Both simply make money out of it.  Culture is not something static, it continuously evolves and may be influenced by multiple factors. In open markets (say the US), some cultural elements may indeed be driven by consumerism, In other countries (say, North Korea or some Arab countries), some cultural elements may be driven by the government or religion. Given a choice, I would certainly prefer media-based "culture" over fear-based "culture" at any time.

You assume we have a national culture in the traditional sense.  We do not.  We are a multiplicity of cultures, a almost endless array of cultural variations held together by law and a belief in individual freedom.  From our inception with the Declaration of Independence, America has been been the most radical departure from traditional culture in human history.  Traditional cultures were patriarchies,(monarchies) centered on religion, ethnicity, borders, language, and art.  Our culture is centered around a document that in the long run, did not establish a predominant culture but allowed many cultures to flourish under a legal frame work.  The Constitution did not establish a national religion, anoint a king, establish a national language by its terms and arguably it did not even establish rigid borders in that our country was broken up into individual states and territories.  Instead it united us under a legal framework that elevated individual freedom over cultural hegemony.  America is sometimes called a legalistic culture.  This is not to ignore the fact the original Constitution contained some ugly vestiges of the old patriarchies, slavery and the exclusion of women from power, being two tragic examples, however the direction in over two hundred years of democracy has been to elevate individual freedom and multiculturalism over the establishment of a patriarchy.  In some ways this has left a vacuum, for second third and fourth generation Americans, who feel disconnected from the cultures of their ancestors.  Corporations have capitalized on this void by merchandising a trite pop culture.  However for every Toy Story, their is a Death of a Salesman, and well Toy Story was not as bad you might believe.   For every Happy Meal at Mc Donald's, there is a  gumbo slightly different every time it is cooked. Look at all the choices in food around you and think about this: no one owns our cultural identity until they clear the big American table of all the dishes and some freakish clown forces us to all eat happy meals

Large parts of modern American culture may be created and owned by media companies, but look what isn't -- the literature of the American Renaissance, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, the writings of L. Frank Baum, locally and informally produced music, folkways and folklore.  Has MLB taken out some sort of patent on baseball I don't know about?

Patrimonio de la Humanidad World Heritage Site This is the same UNESCO category. In Spanish it means  something of such great value that humanity inherited it and has a collective responsibility to preserve it. World Heritage site sounds like Kodak approved photo site. It removes any meaning that this is so valuable it cannot be considered private property. Life cannot be patented and any bizarre claims to the contrary by US companies is an offense. The idea of Yoko Ono suing  the Tokyo subway for using the image of John Lennon is an offense. The Rockefellers destroying a mural by Diego Rivera because it was their property is an offense. Culture can be created by private individuals or corporations but once it reaches a certain value and universal use, there should be limits to the  financial claims of the titular owner.

Corporations create products and through that culture for their own profit. So you have a culture whose purpose is to profit the creator. Artists and intellectuals profit the whole of humanity as whatever they come up with is either artistic or intellectual and in several cases, both. It helps humanity. So while you can call this present trend as American culture, as you can call a sample of a microorganism as bacteria culture, its not real culture that was formed and accumulated by various people in a region at all.

Interesting question. I think it falls on some ambiguous category between a commercial product and culture.