I am pleased to announce the official publication of my law journal article, Upload Complete: An Introduction to Creator Economy Law, in the Belmont College of Law Journal. This article, which is the result of research and writing for the last few years, is now available to serve as a launch pad for future study in this rapidly growing and changing area.
Below is an edited excerpt of my interview with Prof. Brian L. Frye earlier this year when I jointed for an episode of the Ipse Dixit podcast. The excerpts were curated using NotebookLM and edited and reviewed by me before publishing.
The Necessary Narrative
Graves notes that while the creator economy is a well-established field, having “been around for almost a decade and a half,” the legal framework required to study it has been missing. The inspiration for writing Upload Complete stemmed from realizing that scattered scholarly work wasn’t sufficient for the rapidly evolving digital landscape.
“Nobody’s actually written a law review article that lays this foundation and that threads all these needles together to paint this holistic picture.”
The article’s primary goal is to provide a single, comprehensive lens for understanding the complex web of digital production and distribution. Graves was motivated to demonstrate why this economy demands focused attention, much like the genesis of earlier fields of study:
“The point of the paper was to highlight and wrap all [these disparate areas of law and policy] into one cohesive narrative to lay the foundation for why this is different, why it should be treated differently and studied differently or even simultaneously with all these other established areas of law.”
The Anatomy of the Ecosystem
In defining the creator economy, Graves emphasizes that it is much more than just individuals posting videos online; it is a complex, multi-party structure that transcends traditional categories of media and entertainment.
“What I really try to hone in on and highlight in the paper is that it’s an ecosystem. It’s three major categories and distinct players which is creators… But then you also have the platforms… and then the advertising and marketing ecosystem.”
This economy is inherently distinct from historical entertainment models because creators often engage in a direct-to-consumer or direct-to-fan/community relationships. The democratization of creation and distribution, spurred by technology like the omnipresent smartphone camera and the open internet, caused the phenomenon to balloon.
The Perils of Borrowed Land
A core tension Graves addresses is the inherent instability creators face when relying on third-party platforms for their livelihood and audience reach.
“Most platforms don’t let individual users own their network, own their audience. And so that’s a big problem for creators that are building a huge financial business and growing substantially if the platform decides to change. It’s algorithmic fine-tunings and tweaking that can devastate and impact their audience and their reach and then ultimately their income, potentially overnight.”
This volatility underscores the need for regulators to grasp the systemic nature of the market. Graves notes that when lawmakers attempt to address singular issues within the ecosystem, they risk triggering widespread collapse:
“They need this holistic picture to understand how it’s really a domino or house of cards effect. One thing here can affect a lot over here.”
Copyright’s Digital Mutation
The article deeply explores how legacy legal regimes, particularly copyright law, struggle to keep pace with the speed of digital innovation. This friction is encapsulated in the concept of “Remix Culture 2.0.”
“Historically, remix culture (when Lawrence Lessig and others were writing about it) was more of a manual process of internet creators going and grabbing content and remixing it themselves. I think what we have now is a societal shift of platforms that have incorporated, just by the click or tap of a button, being able to take somebody’s content and build upon it.”
This instantaneous, platform-enabled remixing creates complex challenges in determining what qualifies as original or fair use, particularly when content is ephemeral or produced at a massive, daily scale.
The AI Wild Card
A final area of uncertainty—and opportunity—is generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Graves sees GenAI systems as double-edged: sometimes beneficial, often terrifying.
AI has long been beneficial to creators through systems that help content surface to the right users, thanks to machine learning and recommendation systems. Generative tools also offer productivity and back office assistance, such as automatically creating transcripts for editing.
However, the rapid adoption of Gen AI for creative output is causing palpable anxiety:
“I think that’s where creators are scared about this creation side [of Gen AI]… But also some creators are unlocking a lot of possibility. Maybe they’re using it not for creation of a final output that they’re just going to throw up and maybe be deemed AI slop. Maybe they’re using it for a first draft. Maybe they’re using it to iterate or ideate in that process.”
A Blueprint for The Future
Ultimately, Graves intends for Upload Complete to provide the launch pad, offering a framework to understand these issues—from platforms controlling algorithms to the ethical use of AI—in a systematic way, ensuring that the legal discussion catches up to the culture.
“[M]y point in the paper was to get something out there, get the discussion going. Give regulators, give judges, give other people something to look at that fleshes all these concepts out at a very high level because there’s so much happening at an individual level.”
Download or Listen
Download a copy of the article over at SSRN.
Listen to the full interview with Brian L. Frye on the Ipse Dixit podcast.
