About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

94 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1555 (2019)
The Second Digital Disruption: Streaming and the Dawn of Data-Driven Creativity

handle is hein.journals/nylr94 and id is 1581 raw text is: THE SECOND DIGITAL DISRUPTION: STREAMING AND THE DAWN OF DATA- DRIVEN CREATIVITY KAL RAUSTIALAt & CHRISTOPHER JON SPRIGMAN* This Article explores how the explosive growth of online streaming is transforming the market for creative content. Two decades ago, the popularization of the internet led to what we refer to here as the first digital disruption: Napster, file-sharing, and the re-ordering of numerous content industries, from music to film to news. The advent of mass streaming has led us to a second digital disruption, one driven by the ability of streaming platforms to harvest massive amounts of data about con- sumer preferences and consumption patterns. Coupled to powerful computing, the data that firms like Netflix, Spotify, and Apple collect allows those firms to know what consumers want in incredible detail. This knowledge has long shaped adver- tising; now it is beginning to shape the content streaming firms purchase or even produce, a phenomenon we call data-driven creativity. This Article explores these phenomena across a range of firms and content industries. In particular, we take a close look at the firm that is perhaps farthest along in its use of data-driven crea- tivity. We show how MindGeek, the little-known parent company of Pornhub and a leader in the market for adult entertainment, has leveraged streaming data not only to organize and suggest content to consumers but even to shape creative deci- sions. MindGeek is itself the product of the same forces the shift to digital distri- bution and the accompanying explosion of free content that transformed mainstream creative industries and paved the way for the rise of streaming. We first show how the adult industry adapted to the first digital disruption; that story aligns with similar accounts of how creative industries adapt to a loss of control over intellectual property. We then show how MindGeek and other streaming firms such f Professor, UCLA Law School & UCLA International Institute. * Professor, New York University School of Law and Co-Director, Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy. Note that this author has provided legal advice to Spotify. All discussion in this article of Spotify and its business is based on publicly available infor- mation and not on anything learned while serving as Spotify's counsel. The authors wish to thank Feras Antoon, Kate Darling, Shira Tarrant, Colin Rowntree, Max Baptiste, Adam Grayson, Brian Gross, Chauntelle Tibbels, Lina Misitzis, Kate Miller, and Kevin Moore for insights into the adult entertainment industry. Thanks also to Amy Adler, Shyam Balganesh, Jeanne Fromer, Brian Frye, Ethan Gurwitz, Viva Iemanja Harris, Scott Hemphill, Matthew Sag, Pam Samuelson, Andrew Selbst, Michael Weinberg, Andrew Keane Woods, Christopher Yoo, participants in workshops at the New York University School of Law, at the University of Kentucky College of Law, at the 2018 Intellectual Property Scholars Conference at Berkeley Law School, and at a conference at the University of Pennsylvania Law School sponsored by the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition for helpful comments and conversations, and to Eugene Volokh for inviting us to blog about this research on the Volokh Conspiracy. Please note that our gratitude to those who have engaged with this project should not be taken to suggest their endorsement of anything we have written here. A special thanks is due to Stephen Gray, Ari Lipsitz, Omarr Rambert, and Tommy Tsao for excellent research assis- tance, and to the Filomen D'Agostino and Max E. Greenberg Research Fund and the University of California Faculty Senate for grants that supported this work. Copyright © 2019 by Kal Raustiala & Christopher Jon Sprigman. 1555 Imaged with Permission of N.Y.U. Law Review

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most