Digital Content Production in Nigeria and Brazil A Case for.docVIP

The Other Development Agenda: Realizing the Promise of Creative Content Industries Sean Pager Associate Professor of Law Michigan State University Contemporary discourse on IP Development has been preoccupied with three things: (a) managing conflicts between IP protection and development goals; (b) encouraging technology transfer; and (c) creating an alternative system of sui generis rights in traditional knowledge. The 2007 WIPO Development Agenda provided a forceful articulation of these goals as a deliberate counterweight to the IP maximalist agenda advanced by developed countries. While complex and largely justified imperatives have propelled this framing of the “IP Development agenda,” an unfortunate dichotomy has resulted. Developing countries have been encouraged to view intellectual property rights as nothing more than royalty transfer mechanism designed to make rich countries richer at the expense of poor ones. Doing so ignores the potential for such rights to spur domestic innovation in and by developing countries themselves. Focusing on IP rights-as-incentives need not entail an uncritical acceptance of TRIPS, nor still less an embrace of the IP-maximalist agenda pushed by developed countries. Rather, what is being lost in the current dichotomy is the space for creative thinking that could realize the potential for IP rights to serve as engines of development rather than mere obstacles standing in the way. An more comprehensive development agenda for intellectual property would focus on practical ways to realize this goal. A particularly promising source of indigenous innovation are the emerging creative industries in the Global South. Digital technologies have served as a powerful democratizing agent leveling the playing field for the production and distribution of creative content. The result has been a flowering of creative production that holds enormous significance for public discourse, democracy, cultural sovereignty/diversity, and m