| MUMBAI: The session
on 'User Generated Content' was kicked off by an interesting observation by the
moderator Sulekha.com CEO Satya Prabhakar who said, "There are more people
who blog than people reading those blogs." Is that a case of too much content
and no audience? Some of the key issues
discussed at the seminar included – how to make UGC relevant for the user,
the copyright issues around content and why are the big brands wary of associating
themselves with uncensored UGC? In such a scenario how does one make UGC viable
for the advertiser? Yahoo Groups' IM Swaminathan
was of the opinion that availability of UGC had a huge impact on advertising and
PR with more opportunities for viral marketing. "Bloggers are invited along
with traditional media to press conferences and product launches. Marketers are
now using them as samplers before launching their product into the market."
Swaminathan noted that as of now it was passion that was driving the
bulk of UGC – passion to put out talent on to a worldwide platform. But will
that be the only driving force? Cellcast CEO Pankaj Thakar who
spoke about the company's business model with reference to Sumo.TV said, "Our
business model includes revenue sharing with the user includes a contract which
we sign with the user who gives away his content for a pre decided amount."
When asked if there was a certain percentage set for such revenue sharing, Thakar
decided not to reveal figures. In fact 'show me the money' could
well have been the refrain for most users offering content on various platforms.
If the question of monetization of UGC is a big challenge, the laws of copyright
infringement are another vast area yet to be tackled. Most panelists
also wondered what would happen if YouTube lost the case against Viacom? Would
that be the end of the road as far as UGC is concerned? Martin
Diesbach a lawyer in the arena of copyright laws was quick to point out that UGC
laws differed from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But one of the main concerns
with copyright infringement was "ownership of content". The liability
of the UGC platform provider is also under question. An enthusiastic
voice from the audience also emphasized that audiences need to give up ownership
of their content once it passes into the hands of the broadcaster. While
remuneration needs to be built into the business model, the process by which content
is monitored and filtered also needs to undergo a revamp. MSN executive
producer Krishna Prasad also emphasized that while a lot of the UGC content online
was unstructured, the genre could also be used for "socially relevant UGC".
The panelists agreed that despite broadband issues, problems with
local content acquisition and unclear new media strategy – more and more
people would look at User Generated Content and there would be a shift from amateur
content to professionally generated content. However, the question
of gratification of the user monetarily would have to be one of the first challenges
to tackle. | 
