Statistics on Cultural Industries - International Trade Centre

industries – which deal with the publishing and production of newspapers and magazines, booksand related industries, radio and television, music, theatre, advertising, graphic design, computersoftware and databases and copyright collecting societies – the WIPO framework includes threecategories of industries whose economic viability is linked to copyright-protected material:the “interdependent” industries (which mainly deal with facilitating products and equipment,e.g. production of musical instruments, radio and television equipment), the “partial” copyrightindustries (in which copyright plays only a partial role such as architecture, jewelry, design, andcrafts manufacture), and the “non-dedicated support industries” (which mainly deal with thedistribution of copyright materials such as transportation, telephony, wholesale and retail trade).The WIPO framework has gained wide acceptance. Since 2003, the model has been adoptedin a number of countries. In 2005, the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) adoptedthe model in the yearly report Copyright Industries in the US Economy. In 2006, WIPO published acompilation of national studies carried out in Canada, Hungary, Latvia, Singapore, and the UnitedStates of America. Currently, more than 10 other countries are applying the model for nationalstudies.As a guideline for data collection for creative or cultural industries, the framework developedby WIPO can be further elaborated, especially in relation to the “partial-copyright” industries.Unlike the core copyright industries, where the correspondence between the standard industryclassification system and the industries is relatively unproblematic, the partial copyright industriesare not fully captured by existing classification systems. Standard industry classification systems aresimply not sensitive to the cultural value of manufactured goods and classify crafts together withother manufacturing activities (e.g. furniture or apparel). This poses methodological challenges forcultural statistics.<strong>Statistics</strong> on Cultural IndustriesFramework for the Elaboration of National Data Capacity Building ProjectsThe uniquely distinguishing characteristic common to all cultural industries is the involvementof human skills and knowledge in the production process. However, there is no internationalstandardized classification system based on the degree of the involvement of human skills in theproduction process, and the existing statistical systems cannot distinguish sufficiently betweendifferent activities that produce the same kind of output. The tendency observed in differentmapping studies to increasingly base the definition of creative/cultural industries on an analysisof the processes involved in the production and consumption of cultural goods rather than on adistinction between different categories of goods, represents an effort to recognize this aspect ofthe cultural industries.Partial copyright industries have proved difficult to define in such a way that statistical datacollection and analysis become feasible. The Framework for <strong>Statistics</strong> on Cultural Industries putsparticular emphasis on these segments of the cultural industries and aims to document also thewider impact of these industries.It should be noted that the framework proposed by WIPO is aimed exclusively at determiningthe economic impact of these industries and does not attempt to capture other, non-economicaspects of these activities and their social impact. As a reflection of this, most of the studies thathave been undertaken have examined the economic effect in terms of value-added, exports, andemployment, and have not attempted to document the social impact of the creative economy.Recently, attempts have been made to assess the social impact of the sector. The UNESCO Institutefor <strong>Statistics</strong> (UIS) is particularly involved in these efforts with the development of a new framework12