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82 Antitrust L.J. 771 (2018-2019)
Blind Spot: The Attention Economy and the Law

handle is hein.journals/antil82 and id is 791 raw text is: BLIND SPOT: THE ATTENTION ECONOMY AND THE LAW Tim Wu* Human attention, valuable and limited in supply, is a resource. It has be- come commonplace, especially in the media and technology industries, to speak of an attention economy and of competition in attention markets.' There is even an attentional currency, the basic attention token, which pur- ports to serve as a medium of exchange for user attention.2 Firms like Facebook and Google, which have emerged as two of the most important firms in the global economy, depend nearly exclusively on attention markets as a business model.3 Yet despite the well-recognized commercial importance of attention mar- kets, antitrust and consumer protection authorities have struggled when they encounter the attention economy.4 Antitrust agencies, tasked with assessing the effects of mergers and controlling anticompetitive behavior, seem to lack a way to understand the market dynamics when the firms offer free products that are actually competing for attention.' Meanwhile, those tasked with con- sumer protection have no good paradigm for dealing with attentional intru- sions stemming from non-consensual, intrusive advertising or debates over the use of telephones on airlines. This essay aims to provide a legal and economic analysis to help face the challenges here described. In other work, I have described the rise and spread * Julius Silver Professor of Law, Columbia University. My thanks to participants at the Co- lumbia faculty retreat, the Jevons group meeting, the Silicon Flatirons conference, and to George Andreou, David Evans, Philip Bobbitt, Scott Hemphill, and Bert Huang, and to research assist- ants Josh Obear, Zoe Carpou, and Janice Lee. 1 See, e.g., Mathew Ingram, The Attention Economy and the Implosion of Traditional Media, FORTUNE (Aug. 12, 2015), fortune.com/2015/08/12/attention-economy/. 2 See BASIC ATrENTION SOFrwARE, Basic Attention Token (BAT) Blockchain Based Digital Advertising (Mar. 13, 2018), basicattentiontoken.org/index/BasicAttentionTokenWhitePaper- 4.pdf. 3 See infra Part H.A. 4See infra Parts LA, III.A, m.B. 5 See infra Part III.A. 771

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