In this forum from a meeting of the 2007 American Bar Association Forum titled “Legal and Business Issues in the New Internet World of User Generated Content & Social Networking,” panelists Armando Llorens, Bobby Rosenbloum, Debbie Spander, Elliott Peters and Zahava Levine engage in a spirited and entertaining discussion of two main questions: how have advances in user-generated content and the technologies that enable digital content sharing outstripped the ability of existing law to define and regulate this market; and is there a way to effectively rein in user-generated content so that the level of creativity is not constrained, but any rights-holders get their fair payment for the use of the copyrighted material they control? Or will the next few years be an endless game of cat-and-mouse between licensing bodies and illegal downloaders, with no good solution in sight that will be mutually beneficial for all parties involved? As the panelists are a mix of old- and new-media advocates and private practitioners, they rarely all agree on much and instead bring a number of fresh perspectives to the difficult questions they address.

In this clip from a 2007 American Bar Association Forum titled “Legal and Business Issues in the New Internet World of User Generated Content & Social Networking,” the panelists begin to discuss the central questions that surround user-generated content from a legal perspective – that is: generally speaking, is user-generated content on the internet really original, or does it mostly incorporate existing intellectual property; how to enforce copyright claims on virally marketed content that does exploit existing copyrighted works; and how to achieve a balance between the needs of rights-holders and internet consumers that is legally workable and sensible?

In this clip from a 2007 American Bar Association Forum titled “Legal and Business Issues in the New Internet World of User Generated Content & Social Networking,” panelist Debbie Spander of MTV Entertainment’s Business Affairs department discusses the legal issues that online content creation distribution presents to companies like hers, from finding new ways to monetize content not originally created in the online space, to enforcing copyright law when infringement does occur. She also addresses how copyright law works for sports content – what constitutes fair use, what must be licensed, and how this is different for the online world.