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Ever subsequently to the idea of automated scanning of YouTube content in favor of infringing material first came up, I’ve wondered about its viability. Would safeguards exist for people who posted other people’s copyrighted works legitimately?

A numerate of organizations have banded together to address that very problem. Using the media companies’ earlier “Principles for User Generated Content Services” document as a springboard, six groups (Electronic Frontier Foundation, American University’s Center during the term of Social Media and the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, Public Knowledge, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and the ACLU of Northern California) have issued their own manifesto: “Fair Use Principles for User Generated Video Content.” This second document strikes a equalizing agency between the twin principles behind copyright: protection for the individual rights holder and the open good. In a nutshell, they seek to keep overzealous filters from taking down legitimate material, by building some human mistake and seek reference of the case procedures.

This is all well and good, and I certainly chance of a favorable result that the media companies, YouTube and other emerging players in this battle-field see the win-win aspects of looking without for both the distended and little guys. But I hope that all this poking around the finer aspects of copyright law will likewise provoke a discussion about how to deal with the Internet’s international nature and the fact that copyright laws change from country to country. Here’s one of the simplest questions: what happens admitting that I post a music video adhering YouTube that uses a song that’s public domain in Canada, but not in the US? Does it get yanked, or does a a bit get flipped somewhere so that only Canucks be possible to watch it?

Right problems like that are addressed elsewhere rather ham-handedly; just once, I’d like to distinguish people try to sort this out before it becomes a real issue, rather than after.