Page 124 - A Study on the Role of UGC Platforms in Copyright Law：An Intermediary-oriented Approach

A Study on the Role of UGC Platforms in Copyright Law: Chapter 4 Formulating a Non-commercial UGC Access Levy Scheme
An Intermediary-oriented Approach

122
more than five billion videos have been shared on YouTube to date, contributing US$3.97
123
billion to the US net advertising revenue in 2018. Another fast-growing short-video
app, Tik Tok, with its excellent performance in the two years since its launch in 2016, was
124
expected to reach a marketing and advertising revenue of US$2 billion in 2018.
It is fairer and more efficient to require the professional distributor rather than the vast
number of diffused end users to pay the copyright owners. In the context of UGC creation,
UGC platforms should take the role of the distributor, and maintain a balance between
securing the economic incentives of the producers (copyright owners) and preserving the
end users’ freedom to access and use copyrighted works. In terms of the specific rule, I
draw insight from the current levy schemes that have been applied to a wide range of media
and devices under the continental European copyright system to both remunerate copyright
125
owners and allow the private reproduction of works by end users. Corresponding with the
126
extension of copyright from the use of the work to the access controls to the work, this
thesis proposes a levy scheme that allows users to access copyrighted works for the purpose
of creating non-commercial UGCs. In exchange, UGC platforms, as well as other devices
and services whose value has been substantially enhanced by facilitating users’ access to
127
copyrighted works to create UGCs, should pay levies to copyright owners. Drawing on
128
Burk’s and Cohen’s key escrow system, this proposal would require the copyright owners
of access-controlled works to deposit the decryption keys to their works with the UGC
129
platform, and the UGC platform would be required to provide the decryption keys to
qualified UGC creators upon request.

4.4.2 The application of the non-commercial UGC access levy scheme

The UGC platform-oriented rule introduced in this chapter (which facilitates UGC
130
creators’ access to source works) is called the ‘non-commercial UGC access levy scheme’.
I analyse it by determining the sole purpose of creating non-commercial UGCs, the scope of
the source works applicable to the scheme, and the collection and allocation of levies.
1) Determining the sole purpose of non-commercial UGC creation
The UGC access levy scheme proposed in this chapter addresses users’ access to access-

122 Omnicore, ‘YouTube by the Numbers: Stats, Demographics & Fun Facts’ (6 January 2019) <https://www.omnicoreagency.
com/youtube-statistics/> accessed 31 March 2019.
123 Statista, ‘Net Advertising Revenues of YouTube in the United States from 2015 to 2018 (in billion U.S. dollars)’ <https://
www.statista.com/statistics/289660/youtube-us-net-advertising-revenues/> accessed 31 March 2019.
124 Debra Aho Williamson and Man-Chung Cheung, ‘What's Behind the Sudden Growth of TikTok?’ (eMarketer, 2 January
2019) <https://www.emarketer.com/content/what-s-behind-the-sudden-growth-of-tiktok> accessed 31 March 2019.
125 Section 2.3.4; Alexander Peukert, ‘A Bipolar Copyright System for the Digital Network Environment’ (2005) 28 Hastings
Communications and Entertainment Law Journal 1, 6.
126 Section 4.2.
127 More discussion in Section 5.5.1.
128 See supra note 117 and accompanying text.
129 Decryption key is a piece of information (a parameter) that can transform ciphertext into plaintext. Wikipedia, Key
(cryptography) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_(cryptography)> accessed 15 July 2019. See supra note 95.
130 Section 4.4.2.1 and Section 5.4.2 provides the definition of non-commercial UGC creation.

• 110 •