The Piracy Wars Are Over. Let's Talk about Data Incumbency

So have actors and writers, to the point where the phrase “Hollywood accounting” is a byword for accounting scams.The EU copyright proposals reflect the view that the main problem for artists is still internet “piracy” in different forms, such as the notional “value gap” between what the recording industry gets paid for licensed music by YouTube and other platforms, and what it thinks it should get paid. Efforts at collective action—such as for the Creator’s Bill of Rights, a “Fair Music” seal of approval for platforms and labels, or the Data Consortium for Media and Communications Policy that I worked on for several years—gain no traction.In practice, almost all successful steps toward systemic (rather than occasional, ad hoc) data disclosure have been linked to regulatory pressure or fears of liability. It took fear of abusive lawsuits to get Google and a few other online platforms to publicly archive copyright complaints.What would an open-data agenda for the creative economy look like? And they could provide better instruments than we have, currently, for understanding the relationship between size and power in the digital economy and how to address it without shooting ourselves in the feet.If extended across the value chain, open-data requirements would have the virtue of asking something of all the systemically important intermediaries—the major internet platforms, collecting societies, labels, publishers, concert organizers, and others—who are often sharply at odds on copyright and other regulatory issues.