New article on filters and fair use

Michael S. Sawyer, Filters, Fair Use, and Feedback: User-Generated Content Principles and the DMCA: Focuses on the negative implications for fair use of private UGC principles providing for prescreening by video sites, including the disappearance of counternotifications, the inability of the public to know what’s been filtered out, and the “digital sharecropping” of fair uses. The upshot: “as the interests of copyright owners and service providers begin to merge (creating a shared revenue stream through the combination of the copyright owner’s content and the service provider’s user base and distribution system), no player is left to pursue the interests of individual users” (footnote omitted). The author advocates that human screening be added to automated review before UGC is removed from a site.