A Levy Scheme for User-Generated-Content Platforms and Its Implication for Generative AI Providers

The democratization of the technology to re-create content and make content publicly available online has spurred the wave of UGC (user-generated-content). Nevertheless, UGC has faced a serious dilemma under current copyright law. Copyright owners can hardly gain remuneration for the works on which UGC is based. UGC creators are at risk of receiving cease-and-desist letters or even being sued, although they have not gained profit from UGC creation. UGC platforms have substantially profited from UGC but can get exempted from copyright infringement liability. By exploring the intermediary-oriented approach, this paper imports a non-commercial UGC creation levy on UGC platforms. Under the proposed scheme, copyright owners can gain remuneration while non-commercial UGC creators are free to create UGC based on copyrighted works. The proposed scheme also provides some insight for how copyright law addresses the burgeoning AIGC (artificial intelligence-generated-content).