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

本项目研究互动媒体中的用户生成内容（UGC），以改进版权法在计算机软件和在线通信等重要领域的功能。UGC目前引起了企业、研究人员、学者和游戏软件设计师的兴趣。近年来，越来越强大、简单、廉价的数字创作工具扩展了业余创造力的力量。该项目将提供：(1)分析游戏中UGC的新结构理论框架，(2)电脑游戏中UGC的新经验数据，以及(3)版权“合理使用”原则对游戏中UGC适用性的法律分析。电子游戏是一种新的互动媒体形式，通常将传统媒体形式与支持玩家创作形式的软件界面结合在一起。玩家创作的内容有可能违反版权法。虽然基于UGC技术的版权侵权诉讼已经出现，但对依赖于UGC的互动媒体技术的实证研究却很少。此外，很少有法律或媒体理论家提供分析结构，用于探索电子游戏行业中玩家原创权和传统原创权之间的复杂关系。这个项目致力于绘制版权法和视频游戏UGC作者之间的交集。这项研究的回报将是为市场提供额外的见解，帮助确保重要新兴技术的发展，并为当代关于互动媒体行业适当法律规则的辩论做出贡献。所收集的数据和所开发的理论框架将有助于那些研究互动媒体的人讨论游戏和其他互动媒体中用户生成内容的评估工具，并澄清游戏软件设计的法律约束。这项研究将提供互动媒体技术如何促进创造力的数据，从而帮助政策制定者和技术专家了解用户生成的内容如何与新媒体形式交叉。此外，通过分析用户生成内容的合法性，本研究将有助于政策制定者和技术专家努力改革版权法，以考虑新的作者形式。

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.