'Collaboration key to addressing IPR issues in digital age'

Strengthening global collaboration, and building an innovation ecosystem can help in efforts to address intellectual property rights (IPR) issues in the context of increasing digital media use, according to WEF.
The World Economic Forum, in a report released today, has pitched for encouraging governments, private sector and individuals, among others, to expand access to content, inform users about ownership and rights, give creators and rights owners control and choice and enable people to be creators.
Gathered from sessions with over 100 experts, 'The Norms and Values in Digital Media: Rethinking Intellectual Property in the Digital Age' report is a shared set of goals to help adapt business practices and policy-making to changing norms and values in a hyper-connected world.

"The way we create, consume and share content and information has changed dramatically in the digital era," said Diana El-Azar, Senior Director of Media, Entertainment and Information Industries at the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Many stakeholders, including media companies, Internet firms and telecom operators, have large and conflicting economic interests at stake, WEF said.
At the same time, the report said that it is becoming increasingly apparent that governments can no longer just apply old regulatory models - many of which were designed for the analogue era - to the Internet.

"The speed of change in the industry means that there are still areas of misalignment between market forces, technology, law and consumer interests," it added.

The principles, part of a WEF initiative and supported by McKinsey, represent values and goals shared across industries and geographies.
WEF has selected the UK and Indonesia to test the principles and to address conflicting views. In fast-growing countries such as Indonesia, achieving the goals laid out in the principles will require new collaboration between the many government ministries involved in the space to design an appropriate framework, it added.
"There is a complex coordination challenge here; it is a global issue with a lot of players and conflicting economic incentives," said Ed Richards, Chief Executive of Ofcom, the independent regulator for UK's communications industries.