Your content or theirs

The phrase “user-generated content” is Internet-speak for audio and video clips posted to a website by the public, not the site’s owner, such as a homemade video by a singer/songwriter or an aspiring filmmaker. Much to the chagrin of the entertainment industry, however, the category also includes recordings made from TV shows, Hollywood movies and music videos. That’s why Viacom, Vivendi and other entertainment conglomerates have launched legal assaults against a number of user-generated content sites.

Last week, five entertainment companies announced a truce with four tech companies that operate such sites, including Microsoft and MySpace. They agreed on a set of “user-generated content principles,” including mandatory use of technology to block unauthorized music and videos. The announcement came days after the leading site for user-generated video, YouTube, launched its system to identify videos and filter out the ones that copyright owners wish to block.

The new content filters are a double-edged sword. They are critical to the efforts by tech and entertainment companies to turn the Internet into a profitable content distribution network. But they could give copyright holders too much control over what is and isn’t a fair use of their works, while encouraging them to withhold their content from the Web instead of profiting from it.

Hollywood has pressed tech companies to use filters that can identify copyrighted material practically since the day the filters hit the market. In fact, in its lawsuit against YouTube, Viacom is trying to establish that sites are legally obliged to prevent unauthorized uploads.

There are good business reasons for websites to use the new technologies. For starters, major advertisers don’t want their pitches running alongside bootlegged videos. But Hollywood would be ill-advised to use the filters to bottle up its works, particularly the advertiser-supported ones. The Net is notoriously leaky, and blocking content on one set of sites won’t stop it from reaching users by other means. A better use of content-identification systems is to track how many times a song or video is viewed or downloaded, then use that information to split the advertising revenue generated by those files between its producers and its distributors. The Web presents a huge pool of opportunity, and content owners need to jump in and compete instead of waiting for all the pirates to be swept from the waters.