A little later than intended, I thought I’d better get my impressions of last week’s UGTV’06 panel out before I forgot them altogether. It was an enjoyable evening, if slightly frustrating. But more of that later.
In an event that was all about marrying user-generated content with old-style linear television, it’s only right that much attention was focussed on Trouble Homegrown, Flextech’s UGC offshoot of youth channel Trouble. As I mentioned before, the site works well and, by spending a significant amount of development money on systems that are compatible with every video codec in common usage, have ensured that the process of taking footage from mobile phones is as seamless to the user as possible. There are also no per-user bandwidth or storage restrictions.
Trouble’s Deputy Head of Interactive Gavin Newman claimed that, in its first few months of operation, the site was deliberately directionless. I don’t necessarily think that’s true, at least not in the way he implied. While there may have been no explicit guidebook telling users what kind of video content they should upload, the publicity material that showed people how to find the site would at least have given broad hints. From then on, certainly, it’s the users themselves that reinforce the direction the channel will take. But Homegrown is far from a user free-for-all in terms of content: its channel-driven themed contests, such as the Bump’n’Grind auditions stream, will only work if they feel compatible with the rest of the site’s ethos. If users were to take the site in another direction such that Trouble’s own content was out of place, all Flextech’s money would have been wasted — so it’s in the parent company’s interest to ensure that the site grows in a particular direction, no matter how much flexibility they build into their systems.
Not that such a guiding hand is a bad thing at all. In fact, I’d probably go as far as to say it’s almost a prerequisite. As video-based internet sites develop, it’s going to become ever more essential to have an eye on the type of niche audience you’re after. And because most of your content is generated by hands other than your own, it’s the site design — not just the look and feel, but the vocabulary and tone of the language you use — that will ensure you’re attracting the audience you want to appeal to.
The marriage of internet-based video to broadcast television is a trickier concept. Both Trouble and MTV (whose Martin Kershaw, head of Digital Media, was also in attendance) have plans to put user-generated content on screen. In terms of technical quality, there are still hurdles there — no matter how much mobile camera technology has improved and will continue to improve, you can’t escape the fact that sit-at-home TV is aiming for ever-larger screen sizes. The panel were right to an extent, in that if the content is good enough, people will tolerate a lower level of technical quality — but really, that is hoping for an awful lot, especially if (as Gavin noted) a very small percentage of submitted video content will ever be of a quality reasonable enough to even be considered for broadcast.
In this vein, it’s notable that MTV’s new “user-generated” channel will still contain a significant amount of pop videos and other content created at broadcast resolution, with the user control aspect extending to playlist selection only. This gives the channel a safety net of high-quality content, and ensures that the pool of time available for user-generated video is restricted — an essential part of making viewer-contributors feel that they’re part of an exclusive elite when their video is selected for transmission.
The third speaker was Mint Digital’s Tim Morgan, there to promote Mint Digital’s new white-label UGC video service, Bloombox. I think it’s fair to say Bloombox was pretty much the point of the whole evening — certainly I doubt Mint would have been inspired to host an evening talking about user-generated television without it. Essentially, Bloombox provides the backbone for other people’s video UGC ideas — as both Newman and Kershaw said, if it had been around when they planned their own systems, it would have been a contender as the basis for their own services. Morgan’s presentation, as with the best adverts, was far funnier and inspirational than the programming surrounding it. I’m sure it was no coincidence that his ‘proof-of-concept’ application, talked through with a witty use of static photos rather than video, was all about running UGC in amongst conventional ad breaks. Still, as an advert it did its job admirably — I found myself caught up in what he was saying, contemplating potential application usages. Shame he spoiled it at the end by misunderstanding the ‘attribution’ part of the Creative Commons licenses many people attach to their photos on Flickr — it means you must attribute the photographer and copyright owner, not the photo sharing site. A lack of understanding of Creative Commons was (ahem) common amongst all the panellists, sadly. I would have hoped that some of the most important people working with user-generated content today would have been more knowledgeable about who owns copyright on submitted content. For them and others, it’s briefly thus: the original authors own the copyright — when you upload your content, you grant a limited license to the site owner to reuse your content in certain ways (and then, Creative Commons gives a clear, unambiguous way of identifying how your content can be used beyond that).
That last point is a pertinent one. Trouble’s Newman talked about being approached by music video companies and ad agencies interested in using UGC for their own purposes. If handled correctly, it would just about be tolerable, I think, but I would have more faith in that if the panel members had shown a bit more savviness in protecting the rights of their members.
Of course, once you start involving advertisers in content-related fields, you must then work out how to deal with situations where conflicts arise. Imagine, for example, if Trouble Homegrown or one of its competitors had a training shoe manufacturer as its primary sponsor. One member of its 16-24 demographic, uploads a video criticising the company for its working practices, including employing under-age workers in the developing world. Given the viral nature of video schemes — along with the novelty of seeing the anti-corporate video nestling on the same page as advertising for the same company — it’s possible that said video would become one of the more popular ones on the site.
Now, in similar situations to that, various multinational companies have used the full weight of their legal teams. If the same happened in this hypothetical case, would the site managers stand up for their users? Would they disclaim responsibility, and expect the user to front their own legal defence, or would they stand up for their members? In conventional publishing, where editors dictate the nature of published content, there are tried and trusted legal frameworks for ensuring resolutions to problems such as these. Where the content is by and large unregulated (albeit with post and/or pre-moderation systems in place), my worry is that companies won’t budget in for any legal issues that may arise, not least because one of the supposed selling points of UGC content is that it may be cheaper than ‘conventional’ commissioning and broadcast structures.
On a related note, another worry is talk of using copyrighted music on users’ videos: one speaker said that if they rebroadcast content on TV, they’d be subject to royalty payments on any music used. But why, if they’re happy with that, should online video be exempt? Even on Trouble and on MTV’s new channel, viewership of the website is likely to be far greater than on broadcast. The impression I was left with was that, even with greater numbers of people watching a greater variety of videos, the channels would resent having to pay anything to compensate original artists whose material has been used. Now, I’m of the definite opinion that existing royalty payment mechanisms are out-of-date and have failed to keep up with the changes in technology, but when a conference that talks about merging UGC and broadcast seems to believe it’s okay to have one rule for one medium and a completely different one for another, even when they share the same content, I start to worry about people’s motives.
Use of copyrighted content, copyright and legal policies are pivotal while considering the future of user generated content and the possible impact it could have on deciding the future direction of mainstream media content. This definitely calls for greater coherence and clarity from the policy makers' end.