One of the biggest issues is obviously how this content is monetized. Is it ethical for successful networks such as VH1 to make a profit off the work of unpaid users? Currently VH1 runs AcceptableTV, a show where five staff generated shorts and one user-generated short are shown each week.
Some would argue that as long as viewers are willingly submitting their content than there is no real issue if the corporation decides to pocket all net income, but to carry that argument to an extreme would be to say that an employer can decide to treat an employee in a manner they so desire and it's perfectly acceptable for the employee to be under-paid and abused as long as the employee continues to remain an employee. Of course our society has enacted employee's rights legislation to prevent this abuse.
This issue has recently come to a head in Bravo's acquisition of the website Television Without Pity. Previously TWoP's reviewers had been paid the scant wages of $100 per write-up for their reviews. This was largely because TWoP was a start-up where most employees were largely working for what is euphemistacally termed "the love of the game." Once acquired by Bravo the writers were shoced to see that Bravo intended to keep the meager payscale in tact. The writers balked at this stating "It's one thing to make very little money when you're working for a startup, but there's no reason we should be paid these rates when we're at-will employees of a big corporation." (Bravo is part of media giant NBC Universal)." Is Bravo ethically bound to provide it's new employees with a better payscale? What's the incentive for Bravo? Theoretically there are always more writers who will do the job just for the elusive chance to break into the industry. Throughout entertainment the industry largely subsides on the backs of unpaid interns and low-wage PAs.
Surely if I want to make a video and share it with friends through a website the website has a right to use my material to recoup the cost of running the site.
Broadcasters can always hide behind the shield of the financial risk they endure. Basically if users want to earn better treatment and representation the only choice would be to band together in union solidarity. Thus they'd be able to demand equitable profit sharring for their labors. Of course there will always be people at the bottom willing to step in and do a job for less
USER-GENERATED CONTENT CREATORS OF THE WORLD -- UNITE!!!
or not...
**Thank you to all the wonderful and uncompensated users who generated the visual products used to enhance my content found through a simple Google Image search for "Monkey Fight."
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2007/04/big-media-companies-like-are.php
http://www.currenttv.com/faq#pods
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/9197.asp
http://mindblogging.typepad.com/whataconcept/user_generated_content/index.html
http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=111806
1 comment:
Matthew,
If the user generated content was "copyrighted" to the user generator and the companies/sites "airing" the material were to "pay" residuals etc. when and if the airing was to become profitable - Would the companies/sites then have to start censoring the material? Or do they monitor it already? If they do not monitor already then we have freedom of expression but if they have to start censoring/monitoring then we're back to business as usual (which can be argued for or against). Any thoughts/info?
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