Table of Contents
Introduction
User-generated content rights is the essential part of user-generated content which you cannot separate from while launching a UGC campaign. Many brands and marketers have to get into legal and ethical problems created by UGC during their marketing activities.
So, in this article, we have to take a step further to introduce UGC legal rights to brands and marketers, by telling them it benefits as well as how they can acquire it legally.
What Is UGC and Its Benefits To Brands
User-generated content is the type of content that is voluntarily created by the users or individuals over the media platform without any involvement of any authorized entity. UGC can be in the form of images, text, videos, reviews, blogs, or any other, created by their own will for a brand or business.
As the internet world is democratizing more and customers understand their rights more than ever, it is encouraging customers to share their genuine reviews with other people and let other people know what their experience with the products and services of brands and businesses is.
Eventually, user-generated content serves as the best content type that is promoting the product and services among people that brands cannot reach with their old marketing strategies and converting them into potential buyers.
User-generated content is playing a huge role in word of mouth marketing for brands eloquently and turning people into loyal customers surprisingly, which a branded content is not able to do in several years.
Seeing such benefits with user-generated content, many big brands and businesses are integrating UGC in their marketing campaigns and allowing their strategies to perform in the online world robustly.
However, there are legal issues with the user-generated content that brands may face while incorporating users’ content in their marketing activities.
To lower legal troubles and to keep themselves away from getting into any, marketers have to learn content rights associated with user-generated content and brands can use it legitimately in promotional activities.
If you are a brand or marketer, then understanding the UGC legal rights and how you can use them legally is vital for effective and powerful marketing.
Legal Troubles That UGC May Create If Used Illicitly
There are several legal issues that brands and businesses may encounter if they use user-generated content unknowingly of legal rights. Here below, we have mentioned some troubles related to UGC legal rights that your brand may get into while running a UGC marketing campaign.
Copyright Infringement
Content created by your users retains the ownership, authorship, or copyrights of the creator even if it includes your brand name or created specifically for your brand. In case you want to publish or use UGC for your branding purposes, then it is a must that you take measures and steps to protect the copyrights of users and not violating any.
As users’ created content is the intellectual property of the content owner and consists of their efforts, creativity, time, and money (if any) of the content owner, they probably may go to claim the end-user of their content for copyright violations.
Privacy Issues
If you are collecting, sharing, using, or storing the content of the users even if it is shared on the social media channels, it comes under the privacy law. It allows no-one to utilize other users’ content without their permission.
Many brands have faced many legal troubles just by sharing their users’ content on their social media accounts without their permission due to privacy issues. Even the government has placed strict and scrupulous rules that protect and maintain the privacy laws of users extensively.
Defamation
Defamation is a complicated user-generated content law in which lots of brands get confused with it. In many circumstances, brands and businesses are held liable due to the defamatory content even if the users create it.
There are several examples when users created defamatory content against brands or any other entity over online platforms like a website or social media channels. Still, if brands remove it, then they come under the lawsuit of defamation.
Many brands have become the prey of such legal troubles and paid lots of money due to the removal of users’ content.
Offensive Content
Due to the democratization of social media and internet platforms, people can share their opinions over the internet, whether it is positive or negative. Users are sharing their reviews and sharing content no matter if it is inappropriate or offensive for the brands or businesses.
When a brand or marketer is running a UGC campaign on social media, there are possibilities that your customers may share their negative opinions too and can degrade the quality of your UGC content. Using or reposting offensive users’ content in your marketing platforms can lead your brand to violation of the Terms of Service of social media platforms as well as it is considered as the violation of law also.
However, you can protect your UGC from any offensive content by mentioning it in the terms and conditions of creating the content or moderate the offensive content before displaying it in your marketing campaign.
Fair Use of Content
Sometimes brands and marketers get into UGC legal rights troubles if users find their content isn’t used fairly. No matter if the brands have used their content appropriately without any offence, but if users get offended and find their content not used fairly, then they will sue the brands for using their content unfairly.
Final Words
Integrating user-generated content in your marketing strategies is effective and powerful for converting people into your loyal customers and increasing the base of your brand potential buyers. However, there are some UGC legal rights that marketers have to consider to avoid big legal troubles.
One of the best and most effective ways of collecting and sharing UGC is by using the UGC Rights Management tools that give your brand a platform to get the UGC professionally and legitimately from users with all legal proofs. You can find many tools over the internet that provide you with an interface to connect your users and ask rights from them directly with full legal coverage.
