Description:

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.