Science ministry releases policies for content-creators

The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning yesterday unveiled a series of policy measures to nurture the new cultural contents industry integrated with ICT technology.

As part of the package, the ministry will start paying for technology assessments for small content-creators. Content service solution providers and platform developers are required to be assessed by the Korea Technology Finance Corporation.

To encourage people to stop illegally downloading content online, the ministry will launch a trial payment service this year to enable customers to purchase mobile content with customer loyalty points accumulated for each payment made by credit card.

The Science Ministry also announced last week that it will form a joint fund worth about 25 billion won ($24.6 million) with the private sector by the year’s end exclusively for content creators who are trying to break into overseas markets.

The Small and Medium Business Administration will introduce a new financing program for independent content creators that will decide funding based on each project, instead of on past achievements or annual sales.