Patton (2019)
Contents
Source Details
| Patton (2019) | |
| Title: | How to Protect Users' Copyright Rights in the Age of Social Media Platforms and Their Unread Terms of Service |
| Author(s): | Patton, M. |
| Year: | 2019 |
| Citation: | Patton, M. (2019). How to Protect Users' Copyright Rights in the Age of Social Media Platforms and Their Unread Terms of Service. USFL Rev., 53, 463. |
| Link(s): | Definitive , Open Access |
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| Cross Country Study?: | Yes |
| Comparative Study?: | No |
| Literature review?: | No |
| Government or policy study?: | No |
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Abstract
Social media platforms required users to read and agree to a license in terms of service before using the platform and posting content. However, the problem is that social media platforms go beyond the narrow license that is necessary and instead use terms of service to grant itself an extremely broad license to the users' copyright protected content. The author reviews the terms of service of five prominent social media platforms: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest, in the context of copyright law and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). The author argues that social media platforms grant itself a broad, transferable, and royalty-free sublicensable license to the user's copyright-protected content through their terms of service. This problem is worsened because most users fail to read or understand the platforms' terms of service. And the author also suggests how users can continue to use social media platforms and protect their copyright rights.
Main Results of the Study
After reviewing Twitter's, Instagram's, Facebook's, YouTube's, and Pinterest's terms of service, it's clear that all five of the prominent social media platforms use their terms to grant themselves an extremely broad license to their users' copyright protected content. This license is overly and unnecessarily broad because it allows the platforms to transfer and sub-license the user's work without requiring the user's consent or payment to the user. This issue is compounded by the fact that most users either do not read or understand the terms of service and may also be limited in when and how to bring a lawsuit by arbitration and forum selection clauses. Therefore, the platforms' existing terms of service are designed to unfairly benefit the platform and disadvantage the user.
Policy Implications as Stated By Author
“It is clear that such legislation (editors add: the Copyright Directive) has support and could be an important counter-balance to one-sided social media platform terms.” “A new law (editors add: the Copyright Directive) in the European Union will further help protect users' copyright rights by requiring platforms to scan for infringing work.”
Coverage of Study
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