This week one of the most interesting pieces of journalism I have seen in some time was posted online. If you utilize Facebook, Twitter, and alternative social media tools to market your business (and who doesn’t these days?), then you must take the 10 minutes to watch the video below. Whilst it talks about use of User Generated Content (UGC) by big organisations and news rooms, there is I believe a far greater problem. The so-called Generation Y are growing up feeling entitled to use whatever they find is freely available online without any consideration given to the owners or creator.
We all recognize that copyright rules exist that your business ought to be following but when it’s easier to do an image search on Google than go and find some licensed content issues arise. Unfortunately, copyright law gets a nasty rap.
Spend a while reading through Tweets using the #copyright hashtag on Twitter, and you’ll see one angry tweet once another from individuals whose YouTube videos got taken down as a result of copyright complaints. Some of these people have the perception that they are reporting news so are protected by fair use, which allows the use of copyrighted material under certain conditions like commentary, criticism or news reporting.
YouTube have been at the forefront of this battle ground for years. Most people who use the site will have received a warning email at some point. In a response to the mounting complaints, YouTube recently revealed that it created a team focused on “minimizing mistakes” that take videos down without a legitimate cause. It’s also promising transparency when it strips videos of revenue, and there are hints of efforts in the months ahead that will “strengthen communications” between YouTube support and video makers.
Marketers and publishers need an unprecedented amount of content to engage with their audience. UGC, especially Instagram, is an amazing source of photos that has been difficult to discover and make use of so far. Lefty tries to ease the discovery of stunning Instagram photos and their digital rights management. It’s a service that is more approachable than Storyful or some of it’s competitors out there.
Although delivered for an American audience this post over on the SmallBizTrends website goes through some of the considerations before posting. Who is ultimately responsible for policing this area? Regulators don’t want to get involved in commercial issues and the original creator could never find every social media posting. It’s not clear than anything can be done beyond the social networks themselves investing heavily to identify misuse. Services like Instagram could take a stand and look to verify ownership at least 2-3 degrees removed would be a good starting point and quite an easy implementation.
