Protecting IP Rights Is Everyone’s Responsibility

Have you ever seen something cool posted on your Facebook wall or Google+ stream, and reshared it with your friends and followers?

You could be guilty of violating intellectual property rights and not even realize it.

Ever since reading Kim Lloyd’s thoughts on the intent of SOPA, I’ve been thinking a lot about how often intellectual property rights are violated on social media sites like Facebook and YouTube – and how often the perpetrators don’t even realize they’re sharing something they shouldn’t. I still don’t agree with SOPA because I believe in looking for solutions via innovation and education rather than legislation. And, to be honest, the thought of a government-regulated Internet bothers me for a ton of different reasons. But, that’s a story for another day…

Even though I’m not a supporter of SOPA, PIPA or other similar legislation, I do feel that theft of intellectual property is a very real problem that continues to grow. Also, despite the rhetoric, big brands are not the only victims. In fact, it’s the little guys – startup independent video producers, bloggers, photographers, etc. – who are being hurt the most. I’ll talk more about that in a moment, but first I want to take a quick look at the so-called pirates.

So, Are We All Just a Bunch of Robbers and Thieves?

If you mention Internet or media piracy, a lot of people conjure up images of seedy characters copying and burning CDs and DVDs in a dimly-lit back room of some shop in the bad part of town. Or, you may picture someone in Asia scouring the web, intentionally looking for content to scrape and reuse on a short-term site to generate ad revenue. Basically, many of us assume that the people involved know full well what they’re doing is wrong, but they just don’t care.

In reality, the bulk of IP theft is committed by those who don’t think they’re stealing or, at the very least, don’t think they’re doing any harm.

Often it’s a case of ignorance. After all, usage restrictions and copyright laws can be pretty confusing – especially when it comes to what constitutes fair use. For instance, how often have you seen a video of a television show posted on YouTube that was clearly recorded by someone with no legal rights to do so with a note in the description saying, “I do not own the rights to this video, and I’m posting it for entertainment purposes only.”

Yes, there is a huge segment of the population that seems to believe if they aren’t personally getting a paycheck as a result of the infringement, they’ve done nothing wrong. They may even believe they’re doing a public service – providing the material for free so others don’t have to pay for it! They don’t stop to consider how others may be making or losing money from their “good deeds.”

Social media outlets like Facebook compound the problem. One person posts the video on YouTube, others share it on Facebook, and still others reshare it on Facebook without even noticing the name of the user who originally posted the video. As this sharing continues and grows, those doing the sharing may even assume that the original poster actually had full legal rights to the video.

YouTube, Facebook and Others: Please Stop Fencing Stolen IP

When you allow digital media to be distributed via your web site without worrying where that material came from as long as you’re somehow profiting through the distribution, is that really much different from fencing physical stolen goods? Rather than only deal with it when someone complains, shouldn’t you take measures to try to prevent it from happening in the first place?

The consensus among most of the big-name sites is that it’s the media owner’s responsibility to notify the site if material is being used without permission. These sites claim that other solutions would be too costly and would severely limit users – and would even result in a stifling of creativity.

Hey, you know what really stifles creativity? When you have to spend hours a week scouring the Internet to see who might have ripped off your old stuff instead of, you know, creating new stuff.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s the little guys who are getting hurt the worst. Big media companies like Viacom have enough money to hire people whose entire job consists of tracking down IP theft and copyright violations. I’m not saying they should have to do this, just that they have the ability to do this – making it harder for others to profit from their work. Independents, on the other hand, don’t have the time or the resources to spend and, as a result, have a much tougher time protecting their IP.

What’s the Solution?

I fully admit that I don’t know of a perfect solution to this problem, but I do think there are a lot of steps that sites like Facebook and YouTube can take to help curb IP theft. For instance, what about asking a few questions with each video or photo upload – things like “Do you have the legal right to distribute this content?” and adding fields for users to cite the original source of the material. Sure, this isn’t going to stop people who are determined to share the content no matter what, but it will make a sizeable percentage of the population stop and think before clicking the upload button.

In addition, simply having an FAQ page that outlines what type of content is permissible and gives specific examples of common scenarios would go a long way toward educating the general public about intellectual property and usage rights. The trick here is to get away from the legalese and use plain language that the average person can understand. For instance, the creative-content subscription site PhotoSpin has a typical user agreement with all the legal bells and whistles, but it also has an awesome The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly section that spells out in clear language what you can and can’t do with the images you obtain from the site.

Would it really take too much effort and be too tough on the end user to implement things like this on Facebook, YouTube and other social media outlets? I don’t think so. Moreover, isn’t it better for these companies to formulate a solid self-regulation plan before some other group (like the US Government) tries to step in with its own method of regulation?