What is a publishers responsability for user generated content? May 31, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , trackbackWhat is a publisher’s responsibility for user generated content on their websites?
By Mark Blei
Today one of LiveJournal’s executives had to publish a mea culpa after taking down about 500 LiveJournal pages that were supposedly containing references to pedophilia. Some of them did, and some of them were taken down mistakenly though having been targeted by other people as obscene. This raised a large scale user revolt along the lines of what occurred at Digg when they were served with a notice to remove a posting of a copyrighted cracked HD-DVD encryption key.
In that case the supposed crackdown on free speech through Digg resulted in thousands of users and bloggers republishing the key thousands of times a minute. It spread like wildfire throughout the Blogosphere and eventually the owners of the Digg site were forced to choose between alienating their user base or possibly facing serious repercussions in legal channels . The Digg folks decided to stick with their user base and damn the torpedoes .
In the case of LiveJournal some of the content clearly was appropriately targeted, and some of it clearly was not appropriately targeted. What is considered acceptable casualties of lost or suppressed content when publishers like LiveJournal are trying in good faith to remove not only illegal but damaging content?
So who draws the line and where? As is becoming more and more obvious the model of user generated content is becoming the dominant player in direct engagement with consumers and so the advertising dollars are following as they should. But the dialog that comes to my mind is where is the line in the sand? Of course we should applaud every effort to remove and moderate those who would post or try to engage in activities that are illegal and most certainly the ones that are harmful , but in the end, who is at fault if it slips through the cracks?
The fact that user generated content is an income generator and also can be used to successfully engage a consumer for branding purposes is out of the bag and it can’t be stopped. But at what point does it reach critical mass in that an publisher has to throw up his hands and say that there inevitably will be materials that go online that will slip through? If I am an advertiser using such sites for either viral or branding engagement purposes how much control do I have or should I expect once the content is out there?
How much blame should be pushed onto a publisher or an agency if my advertisement or branding content appears next to content that is illegal, obscene or possibly just politically incorrect or just in bad taste? Once an image, sound clip or video goes out there how much control should I expect anyone to have, and who says what is and is not a reasonable amount of precaution, moderation or what is or is not a reasonable effort?
If I have a channel that is specifically for user generated content and I have millions of users and in a good faith attempt to remove copyrighted, illegal and or dangerous content from my website, and in the end I mistakenly remove some material that has nothing to do with those activities, where does my liability come in with hundreds of thousands or millions of users? And what should be expected of me from a legal standpoint and how much control should I have in place on a site that gives those millions of people the ability to upload or post content?
As was clearly shown in the case of Millennium Act huckster Michael Crook this power that consumers, grassroots, watchdog groups and legal entities have can be abused. In the cases of even some of the smaller portals though they occasionally fight and win , but at what cost? And who decides how much bandwidth, effort, or time should be spent in verifying that each individual posting or upload of content meets with the site’s terms of service and legal obligations?
I think that as we expand out, and user generated content becomes more and more accessible to people with nefarious purposes an industry wide dialog has to take place as to how much responsibility lies with whom and where that line is. I certainly remember the dialog that the direct marketing folks had that took place in the 2003 over the Canned Spam Act and we can certainly see how effective that was.
I think it’s time the leaders in the Publisher, Advertiser, Agency and Legal world had a powwow and lit up the peace pipe and hashed this out so that there are clear guide lines as to what a reasonable expectation that any one entity has over millions of users when you have an open portal that allows anyone with an account or the BugMeNot extension to login and upload or post anything that comes to mind. We all think that repression of ideas and speech are bad things. Who should be responsible for protecting us from ourselves though?
This posting is a personal opinion article by Mark Blei who is in international business development for Dynamic Logic Inc and the author of this blog. None of the content of this article is meant to be an opinion of Dynamic Logic, It’s parent company Millward Brown or anybody but the writer.
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