The Business of Creativity: Seeking Value in the Digital Content Ecosystem

The report examines the tension between traditional copyright regimes and the digital era's fluid content creation. It highlights how platforms like Viki, WeDemand, and Twitch innovate within existing laws while identifying gaps in rights discovery, attribution, and international licensing. Through surveys in the UK, Indonesia, Brazil, and Turkey, it notes varying cultural norms regarding content ownership and monetization, suggesting that future systems must be globally relevant and locally adaptable.

• Intellectual property (IP)-intensive industries provide significant economic contributions in developed markets; in the US, they account for several trillion dollars of GDP and tens of millions of jobs, while in the EU, they generate approximately €4.7 trillion annually and provide about 26% of all employment.
• Digital platforms are enabling new business models that leverage data and crowdsourcing to create value; for example, Viki uses crowdsourced subtitles to distribute licensed content to lower-revenue territories and provides predictive analytics to rights-owners.
• Current copyright systems face challenges due to the territorial nature of licensing, where rights are enforced on a country-by-country basis, creating high transaction costs for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) attempting to clear rights across multiple regions.
• The internet has democratized the ability to build upon existing culture, with higher rates of users creating their own versions of art from free online content in emerging markets compared to established ones: 54% in Turkey and 49% in Indonesia versus 15% in the UK.
• There is a lack of comprehensive technical infrastructure for rights discovery and attribution; while projects like the Global Repertoire Database were abandoned, other initiatives like the UK Copyright Hub and the Rights Data Integration project seek to automate rights clearance.
• Consumer attitudes toward content monetization vary by region; in Indonesia, there is a strong traditional sharing culture, with 70% agreeing that free sharing benefits society and 53% believing downloaded content is theirs to use as they please.

APA

World Economic Forum (2015). The Business of Creativity: Seeking Value in the Digital Content Ecosystem. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEFUSA_NormsValuesIII_Report2015.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. The Business of Creativity: Seeking Value in the Digital Content Ecosystem. 2015. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEFUSA_NormsValuesIII_Report2015.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=The Business of Creativity: Seeking Value in the Digital Content Ecosystem |date=January 2015 |url=http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEFUSA_NormsValuesIII_Report2015.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2015business, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{The Business of Creativity: Seeking Value in the Digital Content Ecosystem}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2015}, month = jan, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEFUSA_NormsValuesIII_Report2015.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }