Since the explosion of the internet and social media, creators have faced great challenges protecting and monetizing their copyrighted content. Many creators have had to settle for enforcing the provisions of DMCA to prompt online service providers (OSPs) with a notice to block or remove infringing material of their copyrighted content from the platform as the viable means to protect their content in the digital age. However, DMCA takedowns are problematic and cannot really help protect the creator’s interest in maximizing monetization of their content. The burden of monitoring what content is infringing content on OSPs is placed entirely on the copyright holder, which is unmanageable due to diverse available platforms, and the large user base uploading content regularly on these platforms. Essentially, by the time of takedown, a creator’s projected revenue would already have taken a dip. The platform does not get to be held liable for this due to the DMCA safe harbor provisions, and the cumbersome task of identifying the identity of the user responsible for infringement is also on the copyright holders. These challenges aside, being able to identify and sue an online user for infringement is impractical in most cases, usually due to financial burden, jurisdiction and/or geographical restrictions.

However, copyright grants the holders a broad set of exclusive rights which when adapted in a certain combination can help creators actually maximize monetization of their content in the most satisfactory manner affordable by current laws. The set of arguments developed to this realization offers a new perspective on rights creators should prioritize: 

1. Engaging with a creator’s content online is a good way to identify users who enjoy the content, so being able to reserve engagements for patrons will positively impact sales.
2. Social media platforms today are responsible for most of the online engagements with a creator’s content.
3. These platforms display media content with decorative and interactive UI widgets, which helps capture the user engagements.
4. Copyright holders reserve the right to display their content publicly, and can license others to do so, including deciding the context which they get to display the content.
5. Thus, demanding social platforms to alter how they display our content is well within the statutes of copyright, and we can demand that our content is displayed without the interactive widgets unless platforms meet certain specifications.
6. A mechanism by which platforms failing the specifications can respect this demand is to utilize content detection systems on their platforms to detect our content and render it without interactive UI widgets.
7. Alternatively, these platforms can avoid content detection systems by substituting the media slots of all posts on their platform with hyperlinks; the hyperlink displaying the media unadorned.
8. Creators as noted will grant license for display of their content with an interactive display exclusively to platforms meeting the specifications described shortly.
9. This paradigm on the rights of display will boost patronage to the creator’s work, as the specifications will empower conforming platforms to successfully police the online interactions culture around the work exclusively for the original patrons, and engaging with the work on non-conforming platforms becomes unattractive by comparison.
10. Our demands as creators can therefore not be overruled by copyright exceptions like “Fair Use” as a platform dishonoring our demands will adversely impact our sales.
11. In acknowledging the cultural importance of piracy, we creators must license our patrons the right to reproduce or distribute our content; a necessary right to deprioritize with this strategy.
12. By this, when our content gets uploaded online, only the platform responsible for the display is the potential infringer, and in the case of an infringement a lawsuit can be made on the basis of loss of potential patrons.

This strategy ushers in the paradigm of confronting social media platforms as the infringers of copyright when they fail to meet the specifications or respect the rights of display. These specifications as now listed, are the features and policies platforms must adopt to qualify in displaying media with interactive widgets:

1. Platforms must utilize a binding agreement on users who upload their copyrighted content to its servers, which would empower the platform to enforce the copyrights according to the aforementioned strategy.
2. Patforms should accommodate users who create paid access media (paid content) and optionally users who create free access media (free content).
3. Users creating paid content will be required to answer a questionnaire proving they are original creators and have not violated any copyrights, platform regulations, or customer expectations.
4. The provided answers must then be publicly displayed, i.e. alongside the content; optionally a copy of it also to be sent to the creator’s email.
5. Uploading of paid content should be scrutinized by private teams before approval for display on the platform to mitigate copyright violations and other issues.
6. Viewing engagements or having engagements (e.g. Likes, Comments, Shares etc.) with paid content on the platform should be reserved for users who have patronized the content. The content should also be added to their purchases log for future references.
7. Users creating free content must answer a questionnaire that proves they are either original creators, or they have substantially edited the content nullifying the original IP, or they are referencing certain works from one of their purchases on the platform or from the repository of free works hosted on the platform.
8. Creating free content does not need to be scrutinized by private teams before display, but all the answers of the questionnaire by the user regarding the content must be publicly displayed alongside the presentation of the content.
9. Viewing engagements or having engagements (e.g. Likes, Comments, Shares etc.) with free content should be permitted to all users of the platform, unless the content is referencing certain purchased works, whereby it should be limited to users who have patronized at least 50% of the referenced works.
10. Users can only create media content, whether paid or free, when they have completed at least one purchase on the platform. This ensures real users – not bots, are uploading media on the platform.
11. Users can be permitted to make text-only content without requiring payment.

When platforms meet this specification, they become well equipped to display media hosted on their servers with whatever appealing decorative or interactive features they desire, as users are well guided to only upload content or IP they have paid for or have been given access to by the platform. Additionally, the algorithm would also prevent users from accessing the interactive features to engage with the display of a paid content or a referenced content they are not patrons of. So the specification is pragmatic and helps achieve the goal of policing engagements to maximize patronage as intended, unlike traditional social media platforms without such mechanisms. In any case, should a user decide to upload content that they are not patrons of or that is not under the umbrella of the platform, they would need to deliberately provide misleading answers to the questionnaire, and all the details of their answers will be public as earlier highlighted. In this scenario, while the platform may inevitably become liable for hosting and/or displaying content that it may not have license to, the platform would be able to prove malice by the user from the answers they provided and can leverage this to make a legal case against the malicious user to compel them to cover the damages incurred. In other words, the specification coerces users of the platform to act responsibly. Social media platforms that do not meet this specification would not be able to achieve this, and must therefore alter how they display media as earlier noted, to at least avoid being solely responsible for infringing on the rights of display of the creators and their parent platform. Disregarding this specification and also refusing to comply with how we demand our content be displayed is very obviously a deliberate act of infringement given the feasibility of compliance, and the infringing platforms should face the full consequences.

This set of arguments on monetization is hinged around policing online interactions. The seemingly most feasible approach is for non-conforming social platforms to now utilize links to display their media content instead of embedding the media directly in their user interface. This approach could undermine the goal, but is also constitutional under copyright laws in the wake of our demands; perhaps the achievable goal is providing the most convenient form of online interactions for the patrons of a creator’s content. Although the ideal will be to completely police online engagements connected to a creators work or IP, we can only achieve so much with current copyright laws, and take conviction that prospective patrons will choose convenience over alternatives.

Copyright was established to protect the rights of content creators, but no doubt the efficacy of traditional enforcement has been disrupted with the advent of the internet and online social networking. This is the best fix yet! It is therefore imperative to sign this petition for the good of all. Act now to support creators especially those who have been constantly trampled upon and have no power to fight for themselves.