A group of prominent Internet and media companies--including CBS, Dailymotion, Fox Entertainment Group, Microsoft, MySpace, NBC Universal, Veoh, Viacom and The Walt Disney Company--recently unveiled a set of "collaborative principles" that they claim will "enable the continued growth and development of user-generated content online" while "respect[ing] the intellectual property of content owners." According to the companies, the principles will function as "guidelines to help user-generated content (UGC) services and content creators work together towards their collective goal of bringing more content to more consumers through legitimate channels" and "acknowledge a collective respect for protecting copyrights and recognize that filtering technologies must be effective and are only a part of what is necessary to achieve this goal."
The principles, which are available in full at ugcprinciples.com, call for extensive cooperation between copyright owners and user-generated content/video-sharing services. They include:
- The implementation of state-of-the-art filtering technology, in order to block infringing uploads even before they are made publicly available.
- Upgrading technology "when commercially reasonable."
- Cooperating to ensure that technology is implemented in a manner that balances legitimate interests, including fair use.
- Cooperating on the development of procedures for promptly addressing claims that content was blocked in error.
- Regularly using new technology to remove infringing content that was uploaded before technology was available to block it.
- Identifying and removing links to sites that are predominantly used for illegally sharing copyrighted content.
- Promoting "content-rich, infringement-free services" by continuing to cooperatively test new technologies and cooperatively updating these principles to keep current with new developments.
Originally published January 14, 2008 in Issue 7.58A
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