Major Internet and media companies, including CBS, Dailymotion, Fox, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Viacom, and Walt Disney, have agreed to abide by a new set of principles (User Generated Content Principles) for detecting and regulating the use of third-party copyrighted materials in user-generated content.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
The principles, which are attached and available in full at www.ugcprinciples.com, call for a broad range of constructive and cooperative efforts by copyright owners and UGC services. They include:
- Implementation of state of the art filtering technology with the goal to eliminate infringing content on UGC services, including blocking infringing uploads before they are made available to the public;
- Upgrading technology when commercially reasonable;
- Cooperating to ensure that the technology is implemented in a manner that effectively balances legitimate interests, including fair use;
- Cooperation in developing procedures for promptly addressing claims that content was blocked in error;
- Regularly using the technology to remove infringing content that was uploaded before the technology could block it;
- Identification and removal of links to sites that are clearly dedicated to, and predominantly used for, the dissemination of infringing content; and,
- Promotion of content-rich, infringement-free services by continuing to cooperatively test new technologies and by collaboratively updating these principles as appropriate to keep current with evolving developments.
You can read more about this at "Consortium's User-generated Content Principles Extend Far beyond Fair Use" and "Studios Unveil Their Copyright Protection Guidelines," and "Unprincipled 'Principles' for User Generated Content."
