In May 2015, the streaming music service Pandora acquired the music industry data collection company Next Big Sound, which extensively tracks sales, social and streaming data. Of course, in the Internet era, the entertainment and other industries are awash with data, all of it with varying degrees of copyright protection. The Pandora/Next Big Sound deal presents a good moment for a primer on this copyright protection.

So-called “Big Data” didn't exist until after the Internet was well established. The Big Data-Internet connection is underscored by the fact that the Internet is required for most Big Data transactions, including collection, storage and dissemination. Most of Big Data's content consists of uniquely Internet-related elements, namely users' transactions, meta-tag applicators and Internet content providers.

Most of the other constituents of Big Data, such as metadata, are derivatives of Internet data. By describing the contents and context of data files, metadata increases the value of those files. As a result, metadata facilitates the discovery and transfer of relevant information.

Big Data and Copyright

Big Data is a form of content and thus primarily copyright rights. Big Data has spawned legal rights difficulties as to who owns the copyrights to certain data and what protections exist for good-faith intermediaries who store and disseminate Big Data. While the general principles for resolving such difficulties are found in the Copyright Act of 1976, Internet-related copyright statutes provide better guidance.