Online

The OnlyFans Economy: Intellectual Property’s Pivot from Scarcity to Authenticity

Generative AI is destabilizing the foundational assumption of intellectual property law: that creation is difficult, is expensive, and requires legal inducement. When machines produce text, images, and code at near-zero marginal cost, the utilitarian justification for copyright and patent protection begins to collapse. This Essay argues that what emerges in its place is a regime organized not around the scarcity of creation, but around the scarcity of verification—a shift from an incentive paradigm to a source identification paradigm dominated by trademark, rights of publicity, and platform-controlled authentication infrastructure.

OnlyFans provides a revealing case study. Despite AI-generated pornography flooding the market, the platform paid over $5.8 billion to human creators in 2024. Consumers pay not for content, which AI can approximate, but for provenance—the verified knowledge that they are interacting with a specific, authenticated person. This Essay identifies a “triple-lock” structure underlying this economy: verified identity draws consumers in, proprietary infrastructure ensures that access requires staying inside the walled garden, and aggressive copyright enforcement destroys unauthorized copies that would otherwise undermine authenticity’s value.

Applying a Law and Political Economy lens, the Essay argues that this emerging regime systematically advantages those who already possess recognized brands, legal departments, and capital for proprietary infrastructure—while offering little to individual creators who lack pre-existing fame. It concludes by proposing that the Library of Congress serve as a public “digital notary,” preventing the infrastructure of authenticity from becoming a private toll road.

Introduction

AI-generated pornography is flooding the internet; The Economist reports that the market for synthetic adult content will reach $2.5 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow at twenty-seven percent annually.1 1.AI Is Upending the Porn Industry, The Economist, Nov. 29, 2025, at 55, 55.Show More And yet, OnlyFans, the online adult content platform designed around human content creators, generated $7.22 billion in revenue in 2024.2 2.Id. at 56; Todd Spangler, OnlyFans Gross Revenue Rises 9% to $7.2 Billion in 2024, Variety (Aug. 22, 2025, at 05:01 PT), https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/onlyfans-fiscal-‌2024-revenue-earnings-1236495750/.Show More The platform has paid over $25 billion to creators since 2016.3 3.Rose Henderson, OnlyFans Has Paid Creators $25 Billion Since 2016, CEO Says, Bloomberg (Oct. 21, 2025, at 11:06 ET), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10‌-21/onlyfans-has-paid-creators-25-billion-since-2016-ceo-says.Show More

These facts sit uneasily together. If generative AI can produce unlimited synthetic explicit content on demand, customized to any specification, and cheaply available—why would anyone pay for content from a specific human being? The answer illuminates something important about the future of intellectual property. What consumers pay for on OnlyFans is not the content itself, which AI can now approximate with increasing fidelity. They pay for the provenance—the verified knowledge that they are interacting with a specific, authenticated person. The content is abundant; the source is scarce.

But provenance alone is not enough. OnlyFans does not merely verify identity; it protects that identity within a fortress of interlocking legal and technological defenses. Verified identity draws consumers in. Proprietary infrastructure—DRM encryption, anti-scraping measures, behavioral data collection—functions as enclosure. And aggressive copyright enforcement destroys unauthorized copies that would otherwise flood the market with “authentic” content. This triple-lock structure—identity as the hook, infrastructure as the lock, enforcement as border control—is the architecture of the post-incentive economy.

The intellectual property system has long operated on a different premise: that creation is difficult, expensive, and scarce, and therefore creators require the inducement of a temporary monopoly to produce. This utilitarian bargain underwrites the patent and copyright clause of the U.S. Constitution.4 4.U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8.Show More Yet generative artificial intelligence has begun to unravel this foundational assumption. When the marginal cost of producing competent text, images, and code approaches zero, the economic logic of incentivizing creation collapses. Something must fill the void.

What emerges is a regime organized not around the scarcity of creation, but around the scarcity of verification. We are witnessing a transition from what might be called the incentive paradigm of intellectual property to a source identification paradigm dominated by trademark, rights of publicity, and platform-controlled verification infrastructure. In this new order, the legal system’s primary function shifts from encouraging the production of goods to certifying their origin.

This transformation is often presented as a neutral response to technological change.5 5.See, e.g., C2PA Founding Press Release, Coal. for Content Provenance & Authenticity (Feb. 22, 2021), https://c2pa.org/c2pa-founding-press-release/ [https://perma.cc/47CF-7‌5QN] (“With the collective expertise of this group, we will accelerate the critical work of rebuilding the public’s trust in online content through broad and open adoption of a provenance standard at scale.”); Exec. Order No. 14110, 3 C.F.R. 657 (2024) (treating content provenance and watermarking standards as self-evidently beneficial transparency measures, without addressing governance of the underlying infrastructure); Council Regulation 2024/1689, ch. IV, art. 50, ¶ 2, 2024 O.J. (L) 82 (EU) (mandating machine-readable labeling of AI-generated outputs that are “effective, interoperable, robust and reliable” without note of the infrastructure ownership).Show More This Essay argues that such framing obscures the distributive stakes. The emerging regime favors those who already possess recognized brands, access to legal departments, and the capital to build proprietary infrastructure. It promises to entrench the dominance of large platforms and legacy media organizations while offering little to individual creators who lack pre-existing fame.6 6.For the Law and Political Economy framework applied here, see Jedediah Britton-Purdy, David Singh Grewal, Amy Kapczynski & K. Sabeel Rahman, Building a Law-and-Political-Economy Framework: Beyond the Twentieth-Century Synthesis, 129 Yale L.J. 1784 (2020).Show More

While legal scholarship has extensively diagnosed the erosion of the incentive paradigm, it has yet to fully articulate replacing it. Mark Lemley has persuasively argued that the digital age renders IP’s artificial scarcity inefficient,7 7.Mark A. Lemley, IP in a World Without Scarcity, 90 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 460, 470–71 (2015).Show More and Pamela Samuelson has warned against rushing to create sui generis rights for AI outputs.8 8.See Pamela Samuelson, Generative AI Meets Copyright, 381 Sci. 158, 160–61 (2023).Show More Yet, the critical question remains unanswered: if the economic logic of incentivizing creation is collapsing, how is value being enclosed in its absence? This Essay provides the first unified account of that replacement regime, offering both a diagnostic tool for the post-incentive economy and a prescriptive path to prevent the authentication regime from becoming a form of private enclosure.

This Essay proceeds in four Parts. Part I documents the collapse of the incentive paradigm. Part II analyzes the emerging regime of provenance and private control. Part III turns to political economy, arguing that the triple-lock structure systematically advantages incumbents over entrants. Part IV proposes that the Library of Congress could serve as a public root of trust—a “digital notary” that prevents the infrastructure of authenticity from becoming a private toll road.

  1.  AI Is Upending the Porn Industry, The Economist, Nov. 29, 2025, at 55, 55. ↑
  2.  Id. at 56; Todd Spangler, OnlyFans Gross Revenue Rises 9% to $7.2 Billion in 2024, Variety (Aug. 22, 2025, at 05:01 PT), https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/onlyfans-fiscal-‌2024-revenue-earnings-1236495750/. ↑
  3.  Rose Henderson, OnlyFans Has Paid Creators $25 Billion Since 2016, CEO Says, Bloomberg (Oct. 21, 2025, at 11:06 ET), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10‌-21/onlyfans-has-paid-creators-25-billion-since-2016-ceo-says. ↑
  4.  U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8. ↑
  5.  See, e.g., C2PA Founding Press Release, Coal. for Content Provenance & Authenticity (Feb. 22, 2021), https://c2pa.org/c2pa-founding-press-release/ [https://perma.cc/47CF-7‌5QN] (“With the collective expertise of this group, we will accelerate the critical work of rebuilding the public’s trust in online content through broad and open adoption of a provenance standard at scale.”); Exec. Order No. 14110, 3 C.F.R. 657 (2024) (treating content provenance and watermarking standards as self-evidently beneficial transparency measures, without addressing governance of the underlying infrastructure); Council Regulation 2024/1689, ch. IV, art. 50, ¶ 2, 2024 O.J. (L) 82 (EU) (mandating machine-readable labeling of AI-generated outputs that are “effective, interoperable, robust and reliable” without note of the infrastructure ownership). ↑
  6.  For the Law and Political Economy framework applied here, see Jedediah Britton-Purdy, David Singh Grewal, Amy Kapczynski & K. Sabeel Rahman, Building a Law-and-Political-Economy Framework: Beyond the Twentieth-Century Synthesis, 129 Yale
    L.J.

    1784 (2020). ↑

  7.  Mark A. Lemley, IP in a World Without Scarcity, 90 N.Y.U. L. Rev
    .

    460, 470–71 (2015). ↑

  8.  See Pamela Samuelson, Generative AI Meets Copyright, 381 Sci. 158, 160–61 (2023). ↑

Clarity Before Crisis: Designing Legible Emergency Powers in Financial Regulation

This Essay responds to Samer Saffarini’s argument that post-Loper Bright judicial scrutiny can serve as a necessary check on regulatory overreach in financial crises. While that view is intuitively appealing, this Essay contends that it places too much weight on courts and too little on Congress. Emergency powers in financial regulation are often at their most consequential when they are least constrained—and judicial review, though valuable, is no substitute for statutory design. Drawing on institutional theory and recent crises, the Essay argues that Congress should enact “legible emergency powers”: frameworks that define factual triggers, constrain the scope of agency tools, and require transparency from the moment action begins. It then extends the conversation beyond federal law, outlining complementary mechanisms—state-based and private—that may serve as failsafes when federal intervention falters. In the end, the Essay offers a design-based model for emergency governance: one that enables swift action without sacrificing legitimacy and clarity without surrendering capacity.

Introduction

For the better part of a century, the American administrative state’s power expanded largely unchecked. Agencies spent decades extending their reach “to solve the Nation’s expanding problems,” developing their own forms of quasi-legal decision-making across “thousands of orders, opinions, statements, and instructions.”1 1.Ginsburg, Feldman & Bress v. Fed. Energy Admin., 591 F.2d 717, 719 (D.C. Cir. 1978).Show More But the old consensus—under which regulation was presumed automatically wise—has eroded.2 2.See, e.g., Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson, Abundance 8 (2025).Show More Today, concern over regulation’s stifling effects on innovation and production has reshaped both political culture and judicial doctrine.3 3.Id.Show More The political culture, for one, is increasingly less willing to defer to expert insistence that a given rule is “necessary.”4 4.See, e.g., Jason Scott Johnston, Restoring Objectivity and Balance to Regulatory Science: A Comment on Dudley and Peacock, 24 Sup. Ct. Econ. Rev. 101, 102 (2016) (discussing the problem of the “Scientist King”—an agency expert who is “confident that [their] expert knowledge of the evidence makes [them] the best judge of the policy based on that evidence” (emphasis added)); Cary Funk, Key Findings About Americans’ Confidence in Science and Their Views on Scientists’ Role in Society, Pew Rsch. Ctr. (Feb. 12, 2020), https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/02/12/key-findings-about-americans-confide‌nce-in-science-and-their-views-on-scientists-role-in-society/ [https://perma.cc/6LTH-7A‌QS].Show More Courts, too, are less willing to defer to an agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, for example, the Supreme Court held that “courts need not and under the [Administrative Procedure Act] may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous.”5 5.144 S. Ct. 2244, 2273 (2024).Show More

In the realm of financial regulation, the trouble is that laws are often at their most consequential when they are least precise. Indeed, in moments of crisis, agencies like the Federal Reserve (“Fed”) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) turn to statutory provisions drafted for speed and flexibility—emergency authorities designed to prevent collapse before Congress can act. These powers are often vague by design: words like “unusual and exigent”6 6.Federal Reserve Act § 13(3)(A), 12 U.S.C. § 343(3)(A).Show More or “serious adverse effects”7 7.12 U.S.C. § 1823(c)(4)(G).Show More substitute for clear triggers or hard constraints. And when invoked, these provisions can shift trillions of dollars, shape market expectations, and redefine the balance of power between the public and private sectors.

For decades, courts treated this ambiguity with deference. But in Loper Bright, the Court signaled that this era was over. Instead, a new era—one characterized by skepticism toward regulatory discretion, particularly in high-stakes domains like finance—was to begin. Some commentators have welcomed this shift. A recent piece by Samer R. Saffarini in the Virginia Law Review Online argues that stronger judicial review of banking and financial regulators will deter the misuse of emergency powers and reduce the long-term risk of financial instability.8 8.Samer R. Saffarini, Note, Judicial Review of Emergency Powers in Banking and Financial Regulation, 111 Va. L. Rev. Online 134, 164 (2025).Show More As the theory goes, discouraging agencies’ impulse to “cry wolf” will force them to act more cautiously, preserving market discipline and insulating the economy from moral hazard.9 9.Id.Show More

But while concerns about regulatory overreach are well taken, this new regime presents issues of its own. Courts are not designed to govern emergencies in real time, nor are they well-positioned to second-guess the economic judgments of financial regulators under stress.10 10.In re Abbott, 954 F.3d 772, 801 (5th Cir. 2020) (Dennis, J., dissenting) (explaining that “courts must not act as super-executives in an emergency”).Show More Relying on judicial veto power alone to discipline emergency action risks producing the opposite of what critics intend: not deliberation, but hesitation; not modesty, but paralysis. In a post-Chevron world, the legal system must offer more than skepticism.

This Essay responds to Saffarini by arguing that financial emergency powers should be restructured ex ante for legibility: statutes should define the factual triggers, scope, and duration of emergency interventions before crisis arrives. Rather than relying on courts to filter good uses from bad, Congress should clarify upfront when and how regulators may act under conditions of financial stress. Legible emergency powers reduce moral hazard, bolster accountability, and enable swift action that is both effective and democratically authorized. They advance both the long-standing rule-of-law goal of checking discretionary power and the modern institutional goal of building a state capable of responding to real systemic threats.

This Essay proceeds in four parts. Part I describes how emergency provisions in financial law—particularly § 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act and the systemic risk exception to the Federal Deposit Insurance Act’s least-cost resolution rule—enable regulators to act quickly in times of stress, but often without clear legal or factual constraints. It argues that the core problem is not emergency power itself, but the lack of ex ante statutory design to structure its use. Part II engages with Saffarini’s argument that judicial review, especially in the wake of Loper Bright, offers a sufficient check on regulatory overreach. While judicial scrutiny may help deter opportunistic agency action, this Part contends that courts alone cannot reliably assess crisis conditions in real time and are poorly positioned to serve as gatekeepers during moments of economic uncertainty. Part III outlines a model of “legible emergency powers,” in which Congress defines emergency conditions, permissible actions, and accountability mechanisms in advance. This structure enables fast and legitimate regulatory action while preserving both democratic oversight and market discipline. Part IV, meanwhile, outlines possible alternatives to federal regulatory action that may just as effectively aid in financial crisis management. In the end, the Essay argues that clarity before crisis—rather than discretion policed after the fact—offers the soundest foundation for emergency financial governance.

  1.  Ginsburg, Feldman & Bress v. Fed. Energy Admin., 591 F.2d 717, 719 (D.C. Cir. 1978). ↑
  2.  See, e.g., Ezra Klein
    &

    Derek Thompson, Abundance

    8

    (2025). ↑

  3.  Id. ↑
  4.  See, e.g., Jason Scott Johnston, Restoring Objectivity and Balance to Regulatory Science: A Comment on Dudley and Peacock, 24 Sup. Ct. Econ. Rev. 101, 102 (2016) (discussing the problem of the “Scientist King”—an agency expert who is “confident that [their] expert knowledge of the evidence makes [them] the best judge of the policy based on that evidence” (emphasis added)); Cary Funk, Key Findings About Americans’ Confidence in Science and Their Views on Scientists’ Role in Society, Pew Rsch. Ctr. (Feb. 12, 2020), https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/02/12/key-findings-about-americans-confide‌nce-in-science-and-their-views-on-scientists-role-in-society/ [https://perma.cc/6LTH-7A‌QS]. ↑
  5.  144 S. Ct. 2244, 2273 (2024). ↑
  6.  Federal Reserve Act § 13(3)(A), 12 U.S.C. § 343(3)(A). ↑
  7.  12 U.S.C. § 1823(c)(4)(G). ↑
  8.  Samer R. Saffarini, Note, Judicial Review of Emergency Powers in Banking and Financial Regulation, 111 Va. L. Rev. Online 134, 164 (2025). ↑
  9.  Id. ↑

  10.  In re Abbott, 954 F.3d 772, 801 (5th Cir. 2020) (Dennis, J., dissenting) (explaining that “courts must not act as super-executives in an emergency”). ↑

Void Judgments and “Reasonable Time”

Introduction

Rule 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure authorizes federal district courts, “[o]n motion and just terms,” to “relieve a party or its legal representative from a final judgment, order, or proceeding for” certain specified reasons.1 1.Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b).Show More Rule 60(b)(4) specifically allows parties to seek such relief where “the judgment is void.”2 2.Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(4).Show More Rule 60(c)(1) establishes a time limit for Rule 60(b) motions, demanding that certain requests for relief—including requests based on a party’s inadvertence or mistake, newly discovered evidence, or allegations of fraud—must be brought “no more than a year after the entry of the judgment” from which relief is sought.3 3.Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(c)(1); Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(1)–(3).Show More All other motions under the Rule must be made “within a reasonable time.”4 4.Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(c)(1).Show More

Notwithstanding the Rule’s seemingly straightforward language, multiple federal courts of appeals have concluded that Rule 60(c)(1)’s “reasonable time” requirement does not apply where a party seeks relief from the consequences of an assertedly void judgment.5 5.See Petition for a Writ of Certiorari at 8–11, Coney Island Auto Parts Unlimited, Inc. v. Burton, 145 S. Ct. 2775 (2025) (No. 24-808) (mem.) (observing that, “[a]part from the Sixth Circuit, every Court of Appeals to have addressed the issue has concluded that no . . . time limitation exists” for a motion under Rule 60(b)(4) and citing decisions from the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Circuits as well as the D.C. Circuit).Show More The refusal to apply the reasonable time limitation to motions under Rule 60(b)(4) is premised on the idea that “no passage of time can transmute a nullity into a binding judgment, and hence there is no time limit for such a motion.”6 6.United States v. One Toshiba Color Television, 213 F.3d 147, 157 (3d Cir. 2000) (en banc); see also, e.g., United States v. Boch Oldsmobile, Inc., 909 F.2d 657, 661 (1st Cir. 1990) (“Even if appellants’ motion was not made within the prescribed period, if the judgment was void, relief must be granted nevertheless.”); Austin v. Smith, 312 F.2d 337, 343 (D.C. Cir. 1962) (“Under [Rule 60(b)(4)] . . . , the only question for the court is whether the judgment is void; if it is, relief from it should be granted. . . . [T]he Rule places no time limit on an attack upon a void judgment . . . .”).Show More This view also finds support among leading academic commentators on federal jurisdiction and procedure.7 7.11 Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller & Mary Kay Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2862, at 431 (3d ed. 2012) (“[T]here is no time limit on an attack on a judgment as void.”) [hereinafter Wright, Miller & Kane].Show More

But not everyone is convinced. Some courts, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, have adopted a literal interpretation of the Rule that would require all motions under Rule 60(b)—including those authorized by Rule 60(b)(4)—to be made within a “reasonable time.”8 8.In re Vista-Pro Auto., LLC, 109 F.4th 438, 444 (6th Cir. 2024), cert. granted sub nom. Coney Island, 145 S. Ct. 2775; see also, e.g., Lee v. Marvel Enters., Inc., 765 F. Supp. 2d 440, 449 (S.D.N.Y. 2011) (“[A] claim for Rule 60(b)(4) relief must have been brought within a ‘reasonable time.’”), aff’d, 471 F. App’x 14 (2d Cir. 2012).Show More The U.S. Supreme Court recently granted certiorari in Coney Island Auto Parts Unlimited, Inc. v. Burton,9 9.Coney Island, 145 S. Ct. 2775.Show More which presents the question of “[w]hether Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(c)(1) imposes any time limit to set aside a void default judgment for lack of personal jurisdiction.”10 10.Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, supra note 5, at i.Show More This case seems to confront the Court with a direct conflict between the literal text of Rule 60 and deep intuitions regarding the relationship between jurisdiction and judgment validity.

This Essay suggests a way in which the Court could answer that question that makes sense of both the Rule’s text and background history, and the traditional conception that void judgments are nullities carrying no legal effect. This interpretation draws upon the traditional common law distinction between judgments that were void on the face of the record and judgments for which the rendering court’s lack of jurisdiction could only be established through extrinsic evidence. Though judgments of the former type were generally regarded as absolute nullities that could be challenged at any time, challenges that hinged on extrinsic evidence often faced additional obstacles, including a potential laches defense if the moving party unreasonably delayed in seeking relief. Interpreting Rule 60(c)(1) in light of this distinction would make sense of the text’s extension of the “reasonable time” requirement to motions for relief from void judgments without imputing to the enactors an intention to depart from deeply rooted background principles regarding the relationship between adjudicative jurisdiction and the validity and finality of legal judgments. This interpretation also comports with the overarching policy goals of Rule 60(b) and of the Federal Rules more broadly.

  1.  Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b). ↑
  2.  Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(4). ↑
  3.  Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(c)(1); Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(1)–(3). ↑
  4.  Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(c)(1). ↑
  5.  See Petition for a Writ of Certiorari at 8–11, Coney Island Auto Parts Unlimited, Inc. v. Burton, 145 S. Ct. 2775 (2025) (No. 24-808) (mem.) (observing that, “[a]part from the Sixth Circuit, every Court of Appeals to have addressed the issue has concluded that no . . . time limitation exists” for a motion under Rule 60(b)(4) and citing decisions from the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Circuits as well as the D.C. Circuit). ↑
  6.  United States v. One Toshiba Color Television, 213 F.3d 147, 157 (3d Cir. 2000) (en banc); see also, e.g., United States v. Boch Oldsmobile, Inc., 909 F.2d 657, 661 (1st Cir. 1990) (“Even if appellants’ motion was not made within the prescribed period, if the judgment was void, relief must be granted nevertheless.”); Austin v. Smith, 312 F.2d 337, 343 (D.C. Cir. 1962) (“Under [Rule 60(b)(4)] . . . , the only question for the court is whether the judgment is void; if it is, relief from it should be granted. . . . [T]he Rule places no time limit on an attack upon a void judgment . . . .”). ↑
  7.  11 Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller & Mary Kay Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2862, at 431 (3d ed. 2012) (“[T]here is no time limit on an attack on a judgment as void.”) [hereinafter Wright, Miller & Kane]. ↑
  8.  In re Vista-Pro Auto., LLC, 109 F.4th 438, 444 (6th Cir. 2024), cert. granted sub nom. Coney Island, 145 S. Ct. 2775; see also, e.g., Lee v. Marvel Enters., Inc., 765 F. Supp. 2d 440, 449 (S.D.N.Y. 2011) (“[A] claim for Rule 60(b)(4) relief must have been brought within a ‘reasonable time.’”), aff’d, 471 F. App’x 14 (2d Cir. 2012). ↑
  9.  Coney Island, 145 S. Ct. 2775. ↑
  10.  Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, supra note 5, at i. ↑
©Virginia Law Review Association. All rights reserved.