Page 94 - 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 3 Copyright Rules for Online Intermediaries: From Safe Harbour to a New Intermediary Liability Scheme
An Intermediary-oriented Approach

UGC is characterised by the decentralisation of content production. A vast number of
diffused users are capable of producing and distributing their cultural creations. Creation,
especially text-based creation, was decentralised even in the pre-Internet age because it did
not involve much cost. However, the production of cultural creations in the pre-Internet era
engendered enormous cost and could only be undertaken by professional producers such as
publishing houses, record labels and film studios. Driven by the private interests in recouping
investment in the cultural production market, producers were motivated to select a few high-
quality creations, which in turn reduced the information costs that consumers would have
absorbed. In this sense, producers acted as a filter of content.
Unlike the pre-Internet age, in the UGC age, every user can make their creation available
to the public regardless of the quality of the content. The unprecedented abundance of free
content has alleviated the anxiety over information shortages. However, it has brought about
a new concern over the scarcity of time and attention. Decentralised and abundant creations
call for a centralised intermediary to manage and organise the created content.
UGC platforms have emerged to take on this intermediate role by, for example,
categorising unordered UGC according to individualised preferences and transforming
chaotic data into marketable copyrighted works to retain consumers’ attention. Many
customer-review platforms, such as Amazon and TripAdvisor, categorise user-generated-
reviews and make recommendations according to their browser history. Some UGC
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platforms provide tools to facilitate UGC creation. For example, Amazon’s Kindle Direct
Publishing (KDP) allows authors to self-publish their work through the Amazon Kindle
239
Store. Some UGC platforms even directly guide content production by cooperating with
MCNs (Multi-Channel Networks), intermediaries that aggregate multiple content producers
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to help them manage content in multiple channels or multiple platforms. According to the
information provided by UGC platforms on the latest demand for content, MCNs help UGC
241
creators cater to platform users’ needs to gain profits. Some UGC platforms enhance the
appeal of UGCs by promoting the interaction between UGC creators and other users on the
242
platform. For example, Bilibili, a leading user-generated-video website in China, is known

238 Rejoiner, ‘The Amazon Recommendations Secret to Selling More Online’ <http://rejoiner.com/resources/amazon-
recommendations-secret-selling-online/> accessed 20 May 2019; TripAdvisor <https://en.tripadvisor.com.hk/> accessed 20
May 2019.
239 Amazon Kindle, ‘Self-publish eBooks and Paperbacks for Free with Kindle Direct Publishing, and Reach Millions of
Readers on Amazon’ <https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/> accessed 12 June 2019.
240 Havas X Envision, ‘From Multi-Channel to Multi-Platform Networks: Content Moves beyond YouTube’ (4 November
2015) < https://medium.com/@18Havas/from-multi-channel-to-multi-platform-networks-content-moves-beyond-youtube-
34e4b56bc3b0> accessed 12 June 2019.
241 Ibid.
242 Bilibili is the leading user-generated-video community in China, which initially featured themed videos with animation,
comics, and games and now offers videos in a variety of fields. Bilibili in Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilibili>
accessed 19 June 2019.

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