Telling an Old Story with New Maps - Geographic Visualization: Concepts, Tools and Applications - page 102

Text Box 5.29: Net Royalty and License Fee Exports
Only 18 (out of 200) territories are net exporters of licence fees and royalties. This
means that a few people living in less than a tenth of the territories in the world
between them receive the US$30 billion of net export earnings for these services.
The International Monetary Fund explains that royalties and licence fees include 'in-
ternational payments and receipts for the authorised use of intangible, non-produced,
non-financial assets and proprietary rights . . . and with the use, through licensing
agreements, of produced originals or prototypes . . . '. Thus these export earnings are
payments for past ideas.
Ideas shape our world. They are the raw materials on which our future prosperity
and heritage depend.
(Kamil Idris, 2006)
5.2.29 Internet use 1990
In 1990 internet access was the preserve of a very few privileged folk, and often not the
richest but the most well educated (or those working in education). This is a map of the
head-start people, companies and corporations had in what is now the World Wide Web
marketplace. Compare this map with that shown above and the similarities are uncanny, but
there are also key differences in the distribution of new opportunities as compared with that
distribution of old rights. Compare this map with that below - of how the Internet has spread
out in just a dozen years - and the speed of infrastructure development in new technologies
becomes clear. Spreading the web will not be like building railroads or canals. However,
whether extending the scope of these means of communication extends opportunities and
Figure 5.32 Territory size shows the proportion of worldwide Internet users who lived there in
1990 (Worldmapper Map 335)