A Research on Awareness of Intellectual Property Rights in Creative Industry

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to raise awareness of current imbalanced situation of creative market where primary market players (artists) are still underpaid despite the rising popularity of the field and overall economical development. The market imbalance problems are summarized to rise from 4 factors: oversupply, intermediates, power game and absence of artists middle-class. The imbalance could be solved by rebalancing power between intermediates, and stable middle-class formation that would also result in balancing oversupply. The idea of this study is that for middle-class formation a steady income from copyrights (royalties) is in need thus allowing an artist (especially if he works freelance) to survive between the projects. Small firms of collaborating artists could be another solution for better protection of artist economical rights and securing fair trade copyright agreements. But in the end of the day suggested solutions hit a dead end because of the lack of knowledge about copyright policies in legal field. Two surveys were conducted to overview the current market problem and define key reasons for the lack of knowledge about copyrights. The first survey was among working artist divided by their demographical profile. The second survey was conducted among South Korean design students. Therefore this study in addition aims to offer more throughful view about copyright policy situation in South Korea as a case example. As the survey results showed a huge gap in copyright policy education, measures to improve current system were suggested. First, a targeted promotion and public education to raise the awareness of copyright policies. Second, easing the access to available copyright legal sources. Third, update solutions for the existing policies. The thoughtful analysis of existing problem, causes and possible solutions could be a good basis ground for the further researches to be made.