(16 June 2008 3:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) and its online video network, Crackle, have become the latest Internet and media companies to support a set of collaborative principles.

These look to enable the growth and development of user-generated content (UGC) online while respecting the intellectual property of content owners.

Sony Pictures and Crackle join CBS, Dailymotion, Fox, Microsoft, MySpace, NBC Universal, Veoh Networks, Viacom and Disney, which together announced their support for the principles last October.

SPE chairman and CEO Michael Lynton says, “Because we want our entertainment to be widely available, we are working hard to deliver content to consumers in fast, reliable and high quality ways that respect its value. By supporting the principles governing user-generated content, we're helping to ensure the growth of our business in the new media environment. This agreement represents a real win-win solution to the challenge of bringing the creators of content and audiences together efficiently and effectively."

The principles backed by this coalition look to serve as a set of guidelines to help UGC services and content creators work together towards their collective goal of bringing more content to more consumers through legitimate channels. The principles acknowledge a collective respect for protecting copyrights and recognize that filtering technologies must be effective and are only part of what is necessary to achieve this goal.

The principles include

1. UGC services should include in relevant and conspicuous places on their services information that promotes respect for intellectual property rights and discourages users from uploading infringing content.

2. During the upload process, UGC services 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. The terms of use for UGC Services should prohibit infringing uploads.

3. UGC services should use effective content identification technology with the goal of eliminating from their services all infringing user-uploaded audio and video content for which Copyright Owners have provided Reference Material (as described below).

To that end and to the extent they have not already done so, by the end of 2007, UGC Services should fully implement commercially reasonable Identification Technology that is highly effective, in relation to other technologies commercially available at the time of implementation, in achieving the goal of eliminating infringing content. UGC services should enhance or update the Identification Technology as commercially reasonable technology that makes a meaningful difference in achieving the goal becomes available.

4. UGC Services 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. Upon determination by a UGC service that a site is so dedicated and used, the UGC service should remove or block the links to such sites. If the UGC service is able to identify specific links that solely direct users to particular non-infringing content on such sites, the UGC Service may allow those links while blocking all other links.