Comment on FR Doc # 2026-14086

Docket ID USBC-2026-0133 — North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)—Updates for 2027. This comment addresses the ECPC recommendation to split NAICS 516210 into proposed 516213 and 516214. The Creators Guild of America (CGA), the 501(c)(6) non-profit organization that protects and promotes the interests of digital creators, writes to identify a defect in the recommended split of 516210: the "Content Providers" identified in the code’s definition are eliminated from and uncounted by the revised codes 516213 and 516214. The correction is to implement a parallel split of 711510 in the final 2027 classification, establishing a new national industry — 711511, Digital Content Creators — under the definition provided below. "A digital content creator's primary business activity is making and publishing original content — whether video, audio, written, visual, interactive, or live — for digital distribution, with income derived from one or more activities including advertising, sponsorships, subscriptions, direct audience payments, commerce, services, commissions, platform payouts, or the licensing of content, name, voice, image, likeness, or intellectual property." NAICS 2022 code 516210 is titled "Media Streaming Distribution Services, Social Networks, and Other Media Networks and Content Providers." The proposed successors divide it into 516213 (Media Streaming Distribution Services and Broadcasting Networks) and 516214 (Social Networks and Collaborative Media Sites). Neither proposed title, nor the crosswalk published in Tables 1 and 2 of the notice, carries the phrase "Other Media Networks and Content Providers" or indicates where such establishments would be classified. This continues an unfortunate pattern: the 2022 revision dissolved 519130 (Internet Publishing and Broadcasting) into 516210's content-provider language, and the 2027 revision now removes that language itself. Two consecutive revisions have made content-producing businesses progressively less visible in the classification. Adopting the split as proposed would finalize that erasure. The consequence extends beyond the establishments currently classified in 516210. The broader population of digital content creators — the producing businesses operating on the platforms 516213 and 516214 defined with increasing precision — has never been adequately classified anywhere. These businesses instead scatter across unrelated sectors (513 Publishing; 541 Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services; 711 Performing Arts; 812 Personal Services), distorting the accuracy of the receiving industries' published data while obscuring the size of the creator workforce itself. Under NAICS's production-oriented framework, three distinct production processes are at issue: - The proposed 516213 and 516214 industries describe businesses whose defining production process is the operation of distribution and aggregation platforms — the technology through which content is exhibited, streamed, and shared. Their role is to distribute and aggregate, not to originate the content their platforms carry. - 711510 (Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers) describes creative labor supplied into others' productions. These businesses may produce content or be hired to participate in production, but they do not publish or distribute it. The classification's own cross-references confirm this characterization: 512110 (Motion Picture and Video Production) directs "producing motion pictures and videos on contract as independent producers" to 711510 — the for-hire model, in the manual's own words. - Digital content creators perform a production process no existing industry describes: Within a single establishment, they both produce and publish original content — originating the work, operating the channels that distribute it, developing the audience, and monetizing directly through that audience relationship. Their role as independent content producers places them outside of 516213 and 516214; they are not for-hire, and therefore undescribed by 711510. The final 2027 classification should therefore split 711510 into 711511 (Digital Content Creators) and 711519 (All Other Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers) — the same treatment recommended for 516210 in this update, and the correction the recommendation's own logic requires. Please refer to the attachment for more information, thank you. Respectfully submitted, Daniel Abas Founder & President Creators Guild of America daniel@creatorsguildofamerica.org Avi Gandhi Chair of Government Advocacy Creators Guild of America avi@creatorsguildofamerica.org