Introduction:
Traditionally, media companies almost exclusively supported media-generated “packaged media.” However, because of the exponential growth in the public’s desire and ability to communicate through the internet and other modern media, publication of User Generated Content (“UGC”) (also known as Consumer Generated Media) has exploded. Many business and government entities, including the vast majority of traditional media companies, have developed frameworks to facilitate the distribution of content by end-users.
The most prominent web sites devoted to UGC are YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook. The most popular of these, MySpace, began in 2003 as a social-networking site where acquaintances could communicate through the internet. The site merely hosts UGC on its servers. Less than two years after it began, MySpace was acquired by NewsCorp for about $580 million. Launched in 2004 as an internet site primarily available to college students, Facebook, like MySpace, also became a popular forum for exchanging information, photos, video and other UGC. Facebook reportedly adds even more new users per day than MySpace. The youngest of these web sites is YouTube, which was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion in stock in October of 2006, a little more than a year after it started. By one estimate, over 65,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube every day and 100 million videos are viewed daily.
Although it presents great opportunities for both users and web site operators, UGC also inevitably raises a host of potentially-thorny legal questions concerning intellectual property rights, defamation and privacy rights. This brief paper focuses primarily on some of the IP issues relating to UGC.
Latham, Robert P., Jeremy T. Brown and Carl C. Butzer.
Legal Implications of User Generated Content: YouTube, MySpace, Facebook.
Intellectual Property & Technology Law Journal, (May 2008).
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