Note from Eldonie
I took my first entertainment law class in 2003. Back then, the panic was Napster. Then it was LimeWire. Then streaming. Then YouTube. Then TikTok. Every few years, the entertainment industry believes it’s facing extinction.
It never is. But it is always facing change.
What I’ve learned over two decades is this: the people who survive disruption aren’t the loudest voices in the room — they’re the ones who understand leverage. They understand contracts. They understand ownership. They understand positioning.
AI doesn’t scare me. What concerns me is how many creators still don’t own their rights.
Because technology doesn’t destroy value. Unstructured ownership does.
AI vs. Hollywood: Is This Napster 2.0 — or Something Bigger?
The entertainment industry finds itself at a crossroads.
Artificial intelligence can now write scripts, generate voices, compose music, recreate actors, and produce cinematic scenes from simple prompts. The technology is no longer experimental — it is commercially viable and scaling fast.
And Hollywood is uneasy.
The core issue isn’t whether AI works. It’s whether AI systems were trained on copyrighted material without permission — including films, scripts, characters, music catalogs, and trademarked franchises.
Studios have raised concerns that companies, including ByteDance and other AI developers, may have used protected intellectual property to train their models. If that proves true, we are looking at one of the largest copyright disputes of this century.
The music industry is already pushing back. Universal Music Group and other major labels have criticized AI platforms that replicate artist voices or generate sound-alike recordings. The concern is straightforward: if an AI system trains on an artist’s catalog or vocal performance and produces commercially viable output, where is the compensation?
We’ve seen disruption before. In 1999, Napster upended the music industry by making songs free and instantly shareable. The industry sued, protested, and fought aggressively. But Napster didn’t destroy music. It forced evolution. Streaming emerged. Licensing models changed. Digital distribution became normalized.
AI, however, is different.
Napster distributed existing songs. AI can generate new works in the style of existing creators. It can mimic voices, recreate likenesses, and produce derivative content at scale. That raises deeper legal questions: Is training on copyrighted material fair use? Does artistic style belong to the creator? Can a voice be protected? Are we dealing with copyright, trademark, right of publicity — or all three?
The likely outcome isn’t total resistance or full surrender. It will be a combination of litigation, licensing, and strategic integration. Studios will fight where necessary, negotiate where profitable, and develop internal AI tools were advantageous.
AI isn’t going away. The only question is who controls the value it creates.
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