New Principles for Prevention of Online Copyright Infringement Issued

Several major commercial copyright owners have collaborated to create a set of principles aimed at tackling the problem of copyright infringement by user-uploaded and user-generated audio and video content (UGC services). The collaborators include Disney, CBS, NBC Universal, Fox Entertainment, Viacom and Microsoft. Notably absent from the group are Google, owner of YouTube, the biggest player in the UGC services area, and Yahoo! However, another large player, MySpace, did sign on. The UGC principles are intended to provide guidelines for UGC service providers to avoid copyright infringement. They appear to be a consolidation of the positions various media companies have been taking to date. The cornerstone of the principles is the requirement to use filtering technology to block uploading of infringing material and to identify infringing material that has been uploaded. They recognize the inherent difficulty of such filtering by requiring that providers regularly upgrade their filtering capability and apply the upgraded filtering to identify items that eluded filtering previously. They also require providers to attempt to identify and block links to sites "that are clearly dedicated to, and predominantly used for, the dissemination of infringing content or the facilitation of such dissemination." The principles acknowledge that the "fair use" doctrine must be considered when implementing infringement identification technology and when making claims of infringement. The principles promise a measure of protection from claims of copyright infringement for a service provider by stating that copyright owners should not assert such a claim against a provider if it adheres to all the principles in good faith. However, observers have noted that the guidelines go well beyond the requirements of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act which established a "notice-and-takedown" regime for providers of passive services. The announcement of the principles on October 18 came just three days after Google announced the beta release of its "YouTube Video Identification" system. This system allows copyright owners to upload content they want to protect so that the system can create a signature for those works for which it will screen content on YouTube. It then allows the copyright owner to decide if those works should be automatically deleted or if an advertisement should be attached to them. Although YouTube states that this exceeds its legal responsibilities, it falls short of meeting the new UGC principles. Others, however, have argued it goes too far because it does not allow for fair use of the identified works. In response to the UGC principles and YouTube's initiative, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) issued its own fair-use principles for UGC. These principles aim at preventing filtering from eliminating content that may make fair use of copyrighted works and provide for allowing the content creator to dispute a filter's determination. The EFF also provided a gallery of videos exemplifying fair use that is intended to be used in testing filters. For the guidelines and related press release, see: http://www.ugcprinciples.com/ For related commentary, see: http://tinyurl.com/2w7d5u For information and commentary on YouTube Video Identification, visit: http://www.youtube.com/t/video_id_about; and http://tinyurl.com/2ocekh For the EFF fair-use principles and test videos, see: http://www.eff.org/issues/ip-and-free-speech/fair-use-principles-usergen; and http://www.eff.org/pages/UGC-test-suite Summary by: Tom Feather