Sony Pictures Entertainment and Crackle Join Pioneering User-Generated Content Coalition

Sony Pictures Entertainment and Crackle Join Pioneering User-Generated Content Coalition

Technology/Entertainment Industry Collaboration Allows Growth Of Consumer Video Market While Respecting Content Creators

CULVER CITY, Calif., June 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Sony Pictures Entertainment and its online video network, Crackle, have become the latest of the world's leading Internet and media companies to support a set of collaborative principles that enable the growth and development of user-generated content online while respecting the intellectual property of content owners.

Sony Pictures and Crackle join CBS Corp., Dailymotion, Fox Entertainment Group, Microsoft Corp., MySpace, NBC Universal, Veoh Networks Inc., Viacom Inc. and The Walt Disney Company, which together announced their support for the principles last October.

"Because we want our entertainment to be widely available, we are working hard to deliver content to consumers in fast, reliable and high quality ways that respect its value," said Michael Lynton, Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment. "By supporting the principles governing user-generated content, we're helping to ensure the growth of our business in the new media environment. This agreement represents a real win-win solution to the challenge of bringing the creators of content and audiences together efficiently and effectively."

"Crackle was one of the first user-generated content sites to adopt fingerprint filtering in 2006, and we are pleased to join other sites and content owners in adopting these principles," said Jonathan Shambroom, general manager, Crackle.com. "We're all working together to ensure an environment that will allow creators of all kinds to comfortably share their work with the world."

The principles backed by this pioneering coalition serve as a comprehensive set of guidelines to help user-generated content (UGC) services and content creators work together towards their collective goal of bringing more content to more consumers through legitimate channels. The principles acknowledge a collective respect for protecting copyrights and recognize that filtering technologies must be effective and are only part of what is necessary to achieve this goal.

The principles, available in full at http://www.ugcprinciples.com/, call for a broad range of constructive and cooperative efforts by copyright owners and UGC services that are encouraging innovation, enabling new creative expression and furthering the goal of eliminating infringing content from UGC services.

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Source: Sony Pictures Entertainment

CONTACT: Jim Kennedy of Sony Pictures Entertainment, +1-310-244-6777,
jim_kennedy@spe.sony.com

Web site: http://www.spe.sony.com/
http://www.ugcprinciples.com/

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Profile: International Entertainment