Page 244 - 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 8 Concluding Remarks
An Intermediary-oriented Approach

scraping falling within these exceptions does not need to pay the fee and UGC platforms’
unfair competition claim against the exempted web scraping would be dismissed. The
compensation a UGC platform gains from unfair competition claims and breach of contract
claims against web scraping, as well as the pre-determined royalties collected from web
scraping, contributes to the indirect remuneration discussed in Section 6.4.2.
7.5 Conclusions

This chapter discussed the exploitation of UGCs by UGC platform users, including
human users and web scraping tools. Because human use of UGCs does not conflict with
UGC platforms’ normal exploitation of UGCs, some human use has already been shielded
by contractual provisions contained in ToUs/ToSs and statutory limitations such as fair use
and fair dealing. According to my proposed scheme, if a use exceeds the contractual and
legal exemptions, the human user can either directly use the UGCs if for non-commercial
purposes, or seek licences from the UGC creators if for commercial purposes. In either case,
the user should inform the UGC creators about the use, which allows the UGC creators to
apply for indirect remuneration from the UGC platform.
Web scraping is less acceptable than human use because web scraping extracts a colossal
number of UGCs, which can generate much more significant value as a whole database than
the sum of the value created by individual UGCs. UGC databases that meet the originality
standard should be subject to the proposed copyright approach, whereas non-copyrighted
UGC databases should be governed by non-proprietary anti-unfair competition law rather
than trespass law. In terms of the ‘content’ dimension of UGCs, the web scraper should not
use the scraped UGCs in a way that competes with the scraped platform. In terms of the ‘data’
dimension of UGCs, the web scraper should protect the privacy of UGC creators when using
UGCs containing the UGC creators’ personal information. The proposed solutions for human
users’ use and web scraping of UGCs work with the remuneration schemes discussed in
Section 6.4.2, to strike a balance between the interests of UGC creators, UGC platforms and
platform users in using UGCs.

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