“Foster Innovation, Encourage Creativity, Thwart Infringement.”

Posted by Keeley Vega at 11:27 pm under Copyright, DMCA.

An article in this month’s GC California magazine discusses the User Generated Content Principles recently promulgated by a coalition of motion picture, television, computer and Web 2.0 companies. The proposed “best practices” for UGC sites are intended to supplement the notice-and-takedown regime of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and have already been implemented by many sites. Copyright owners that signed on to the Principles have agreed not to sue service providers who follow these agreed-upon procedures.

Here is a summary of the 15 Principles:

UGC sites to post information that promotes respect for intellectual property rights and discourages users from uploading infringing content.
During the upload process, UGC sites should prominently inform users that they may not upload infringing content and that, by uploading content, they affirm that such uploading complies with the UGC Service’s terms of use.
UGC sites to implement effective content identification technology.
UGC sites and Copyright Owners should work together to identify sites that are clearly dedicated to, and predominantly used for, the dissemination of infringing content or the facilitation of such dissemination.
UGC sites to provide commercially reasonable enhanced searching capabilities to allow copyright owners to more quickly remove unauthorized material.
When sending notices and making claims of infringement, Copyright Owners should accommodate fair use.
Copyright Owners should provide to UGC Services URLs identifying online locations where content that is the subject of notices of infringement is found – but only to the extent the UGC Service exposes such URLs.
UGC sites should comply with the DMCA and, in addition, provide copies of any counter-notifications received to the Copyright Owner who complained in the first instance.
When infringing content is removed by UGC Services in response to a notice from a Copyright Owner, the UGC Service should use reasonable efforts to notify the Copyright Owner of the removal, and should permit the Copyright Owner to provide, or request the UGC Service to provide on its behalf, reference data for such content to be used by the Identification Technology.
UGC Services should retain for at least 60 days: (a) information related to user uploads of audio and video content to their services, including IP addresses and time and date information for uploaded content; and (b) user-uploaded content that has been on their services but has been subsequently removed following a notice of infringement.
UGC Services should use reasonable efforts to track infringing uploads of copyrighted content by the same user and should use such information in the reasonable implementation of a repeat infringer termination policy.
In engaging in the activities set forth in these Principles outside the United States, UGC Services and Copyright Owners should follow these Principles to the extent that doing so would not contravene the law of the applicable foreign jurisdiction.
Copyright Owners should not assert that adherence to these Principles support disqualification from any limitation on direct or indirect liability relating to material online under the Copyright Act or substantively similar statutes of any applicable jurisdiction outside the United States.
If a UGC Service adheres to all of these Principles in good faith, the Copyright Owner should not assert a claim of copyright infringement against such UGC Service with respect to infringing user-uploaded content that might remain on the UGC Service despite such adherence to these Principles.
Copyright Owners and UGC Services should continue to cooperate with each other’s reasonable efforts to create content-rich, infringement-free services.