Rejoinder: User-Generated Content Availability and Platform Regulation

Tushnet [Tushnet R (2023) Comment on “Frontiers: The interplay of user-generated content, content industry revenues, and platform regulation: Quasi-experimental evidence from YouTube”. Marketing Sci., ePub ahead of print October 27, https://doi.org/10. 1287/mksc.2023.0339] provides a commentary on Wl ̈omert et al. [Wl ̈omert N, Papies D, Clement M, Spann M (2023) Frontiers: The interplay of user-generated content, content industry revenues, and platform regulation: Quasi-experimental evidence from YouTube. Marketing Sci., ePub ahead of print October 27, https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2022.0080], who analyzed the quasi-experiment that occurred when numerous songs became available as user-generated content (UGC) on YouTube, following an agreement between You-Tube and the German collecting society GEMA. Tushnet’s thoughtful commentary centers around the scope of legal protection that UGC platforms enjoy, and whether the situation examined in Wl ̈omert et al. qualifies as a “legal safe harbor.” In our rejoinder, we clarify the study’s relevance for questions concerning platform regulation, highlight the implications of these regulatory aspects for platforms’ strong bargaining power, as reflected in comparatively low payouts to rightsholders, and discuss how the sampling versus cannibalization effects that we study impact market outcomes for different stake-holders under these market conditions.