Page 132 - 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:
An Intermediary-oriented Approach

is uncertain and unlimited. Furthermore, the purpose of UGC platforms to seek licences
for particular works is to directly use the works by the platforms themselves, rather than to
facilitate UGC creators’ use. Under this scenario, UGC platforms act as user-distributors
who should obtain license from copyright owners. Since UGC platforms have no incentive to
internalize the cost of UGC creators, legal intervention is needed to require UGC platforms
to take affirmative actions to facilitate UGC creations based on pre-existing works.

4.5 Conclusions

The access control right has independent and significant value in the Internet age, where
due to the digital revolution, the ability to reproduce and distribute content has shifted to end
users. The exact problem of the current anti-circumvention clause consists in its departure
from the intermediary-oriented tradition and its direct assault on non-commercial users. This
chapter introduced a non-commercial UGC access levy scheme, under which UGC platforms
work as distributor intermediaries. UGC platforms should remunerate the copyright owners
(the producers) of pre-existing works on which UGCs are based and non-commercial UGC
creators (the users) can gain the decryption key to access-controlled works. This UGC
platform-oriented levy scheme is not only faithful to the intermediary-oriented tradition
underlying copyright law, but also well adapted to business practices in the platform
economy.
The non-commercial UGC access levy scheme in this chapter attempts to address the
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‘intractable trade-off inherent in copyright’—the tension between incentives and access.
The next chapter advances a non-commercial UGC creation levy scheme that covers users’
use of copyrighted works once authorised access has been obtained. Both schemes share the
purpose of freeing users’ access to and use of copyrighted works to create UGCs for non-
commercial purposes.

Review 1, 13.
151 Oren Bracha and Talha Syed, ‘Beyond the Incentive-Access Paradigm—Product Differentiation & Copyright Revisited’ (2014)
92 Texas Law Review 1841, 1842.

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