Culture Growth

Just as content creation, the amount of web platforms designed for sharing multimedia contents and people's willingness to share have constantly grown.

The culture of open production and sharing play their parts, but digitalization as such is the foremost reason for watering down the concept of copyright as versions of older art pieces and photographs with expired copyright protection are increasingly available online.

Traditionally copyright protections have been exclusive and easily comparable to monopolies or other IPR protections schemes such as patents.

Huge, industry-wide IPR-portfolios are managed by corporations, e.g. record companies and publishers of scientific journals, who have tried to protect usage and dissemination rights of intellectual property so that everyone using these contents are always forced to pay license fees or royalties.

In music, these copyright monopolies have already been largely overturned due to streaming services such as Spotify.

Where scientific journals are concerned, the movement towards open access and free sharing of information is picking up steam.

In the vast internet world, drawing the boundaries between the use of free material and the infringement of copyright can be a daunting task for ordinary people. As monitoring all the activities on the internet that fall under copyright violation is not a realistic solution; the legitimate usage of digital materials is reliant on the common sense of users. Going forward, the concept of conventional copyright is expected to weaken further.

However, the continued weakening of copyright could impact creative practice significantly. If the existing income model based on copyright collapses and content producers are not properly compensated, decrease in original content and downturn in creative work can be anticipated, which can lead to the recession of art and culture in the long run.

Makkie Abdelhalim

CEO