EAGER: A Legal and Structural Investigation of Online User-Generated Content Systems

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This project examines user-generated content (UGC) in interactive media, in order to improve the functioning of copyright law with respect to important areas of computer software and online communications. UGC is currently generating interest among businesses, researchers, scholars, and game software designers. In recent years, increasingly powerful, simple, and cheap digital authoring tools have extended the power of amateur creativity. This project will provide: (1) a new structural theoretical framework for the analysis of UGC in games, (2) new empirical data on UGC in computer games, and (3) a legal analysis of the applicability of copyright's "fair use" doctrine to UGC in games. Videogames are a new form of interactive media often combine traditional media forms with software interfaces that enable forms of player authorship. Content authored by players has the potential to infringe copyright law. While copyright infringement lawsuits have been filed based on UGC technologies, there have been few empirical studies of interactive media technologies that depend on UGC. Additionally, very few legal or media theorists have provided analytical structures that can be used to explore the complex relationship between player authorship and traditional authorship in the video game industry. This project endeavors to map the intersection between copyright law and UGC authorship in video games. The payoff of this research will be to provide additional insight to the market, to help ensure the development of important emerging technologies, and to contribute to the contemporary debate over appropriate legal rules for the interactive media industry. The data collected and the theoretical framework developed will aid those researching interactive media in speaking about evaluating tools for user-generated content in games and other interactive media, and clarify the legal constraints on game software design. This research will provide data on how interactive media technologies facilitate creativity, thereby helping policy makers and technologists understand how user-generated content intersects with new media forms. Additionally, by analyzing the legality of user-generated content, this research will aid policy makers and technologists in efforts to reform copyright law to take into account new forms of authorship.