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UNIVERSITÉ DE STRASBOURG - SCUOLA SUPERIORE DI STUDI UNIVERSITARI E DI PERFEZIONAMENTO SANT’ANNA ÉCOLE DOCTORALE ED221 AUGUSTIN COURNOT Bureau d’économie théorique et appliquée - UMR 7522 En cotutelle avec le Laboratory of Economics and Management THÈSE présentée par : Kim-Marlène LE soutenue le : 12 septembre 2018 pour obtenir le grade de : Docteur de l’université de Strasbourg Discipline/ Spécialité : Sciences économiques The Role of Creative Communities and Entrepreneurs in Producing Digital Content without Formal Intellectual Property The Case of Alternative Pornography THÈSE dirigée par : PÉNIN Julien Professeur, Université de Strasbourg NUVOLARI Alessandro Professeur, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna RAPPORTEURS : SUIRE Raphaël Professeur, Université de Nantes MARENGO Luigi Professeur, Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali AUTRES MEMBRES DU JURY : SZOSTAK Bérangère Professeur, Université de Lorraine MARTINELLI Arianna Assistant Professor, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna Ecole Doctorale Augustin Cournot Doctoral School of Economics of Sant’Anna DOCTORAL THESIS THE ROLE OF CREATIVE COMMUNITIES AND ENTREPRENEURS IN PRODUCING DIGITAL CONTENT WITHOUT FORMAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY The Case of Alternative Pornography LE Kim-Marlène to obtain the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the Université de Strasbourg and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna Doctoral committee Thesis supervisors Julien Pénin (Université de Strasbourg) Alessandro Nuvolari (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna) External referees Raphaël Suire (Université de Nantes) Luigi Marengo (Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali “Guido Carli”) Internal referees Bérangère Szostak (Université de Lorraine) Arianna Martinelli (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna) The public defence shall be held on 12th September 2018. SUMMARY Digitisation and the Internet have brought tremendous change to the exchange of information and content, transforming the creation, distribution and consumption of audiovisual material. They have led established institutions coordinating incentives for cultural production and exploitation to evolve and encouraged the emergence of new institutions and new paths for creative initiatives. Building on Schumpeterian research on “Mark I - Mark II” industrial patterns of innovation, as investigated first by Nelson and Winter (1982) and later, Malerba and Orsenigo (1995, 1996), this thesis assumes that the pornographic industry, can be modelled as two distinct entities. In the first part of the industry, the dominant segment is structured in a Schumpeter Mark II mode – an oligopoly with large companies (also called majors). The second part of the industry, also called the “alternative”, is composed of a creative fringe made of a “cottage” type industrial tissue, populated with productive individuals (also called “entrepreneurs”) and communities. In particular, alternative porn communities are centred around a certain opposition to the dominant market. They are distinctive not only in their intentionally aestheticised style but also in their production process. This characterises the fringe as a Schumpeter Mark I mode where innovation seeks to be radical, and low appropriation opportunities lead the way to entry on the market of creative entrepreneurs with low resources. Interestingly, this segmentation is quite current in Creative and Cultural Industries (CCI), and the pornographic sector actually shares other characteristics with the CCI. The literature provides an overview of contemporary pornographic industry and makes the case for addressing pornography as a CCI, documenting similarities and differences with other creative industries. Like many cultural sectors in the digital age, pornography seeks to protect its contents from mass piracy. However, the online adult industry constitutes a case of a low intellectual property appropriation regime, where innovation and creation are still existent although opportunities for monetising content are rare, reducing incentives to invest in production. 2/226 In terms of innovation, a variety of actors at different levels sustain the costs of research and new product development: the market (structured by formal IPRs), the communities and the entrepreneurs. While they each have their respective resources and timeframe for creation, these are shown to be interrelated. As a matter of fact, entrepreneurs seek opportunities on the market and find helpful resources in communities, whereas the intellectual property institutions try to adapt to new creative processes and logics, and lastly, communities make up for the lethargy of formal institutions by coordinating part of the creation and diffusion of audiovisual content. Creative communities are also the locus of artistic and entrepreneurial knowledge circulation. One can specifically observe such dynamics in subcultural or “underground” creative collectives (Simon, 2009). In pornography, various alternative porn communities have had an interesting impact on the creation of pornographic content. Sex-positive (sex-pos) pornographers, for instance, have been involved in the production of new representations of sexuality, relying on entrepreneurship, collective action and creation. Business models for mainstream porn were extensively explained by Darling (2014) and to some extent, smaller scale indie productions apply the same strategies, only with lower costs and more limited resources than dominant porn studios. While the role of communities was intentionally overlooked for this segment of the industry, I argue that it is central to the production and exploitation of alternative pornographies. The research question, then, consists in investigating the role of creative communities and entrepreneurs in producing digital sex-positive pornography in a context of a weak intellectual property regime (i.e. in a Schumpeter Mark I mode). Using a qualitative method to tackle this question, I collected first hand data on the field (interviews and observations) and second-hand data in the literature and online and analysed this body of sources allowing to document community and entrepreneurial activity in the sex-positive pornographic niche. 3/226 As a conclusion, I find that sex-positive pornographic content is specifically exploited mostly through informal means, based on intrinsic motivation and reputational mechanisms. More specifically, sex-positive communities and entrepreneurial initiatives are central to the creation of copyrighted content, as they act as informal instruments of intellectual property exploitation and appropriation. Even though entry and exit are frequent, caused by high risk and an unstable environment for porn entrepreneurship, artists find ways to appropriate their creations through informal intellectual property protection. They do it through the support of community as a resource for research and development as well as symbolic validation and monetary appropriation. Artist-entrepreneurs also use branding as a tool of differentiation without formally protecting it with a trademark for example. Those who stay in the market have a close relationship to user communities and artistic communities and develop entrepreneurial skills thanks to them. They are responding to the market more or less consciously, thus potentially entering in the Schumpeter Mark II type of innovation dynamics of consolidating existing R&D. Chapter VII, written in French, is an extension of the thesis dealing with the notion of gratuité in online pornography. This chapter elaborates on the dual meaning of the French word gratuité : on the one hand gratuité means "free-of-charge" or "gratis", defining the situation of an absence of price or payment; and on the other hand, it means "gratuitous", thus characterising the absence of moral value or intention. Both illegitimate as a professional occupation and as a cinematographic work, pornographic production is seen as being created without remuneration by amateurs and enthusiasts. It is also viewed most of the time on content aggregators (also known as "tubes") which have the ability to offer millions of free videos. However, I show that behind the assumed gratuity of online pornography, there are both commercial and symbolic exchanges. Finally, chapter VIII is a summary of the thesis in French. 4/226 All, in all, this thesis first provides a better understanding of a subcultural market niche within an unexplored case in the economics of the Cultural and Creative Industries, i.e. pornography. Second, it sheds light on new mechanisms for informal appropriation of intellectual property in the context of a weak IP appropriation regime. Last, it refines the concept of entrepreneurship in the CCI by providing a detailed examination of the sex-positive entreporneur. Keywords : intellectual property; copyright; creative industries; adult entertainment industry; online pornography; communities; entrepreneurship; digital content 5/226 CONTENT SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................. 2 LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................... 10 LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................... 10 LIST OF BOXES ...................................................................................................................... 11 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ....................................................................................................

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