Insight: WGA Should Focus Less On AI And More On Social Media Content

When it comes to Hollywood trying to understand new technologies, it’s almost laughable in its execution. Whether it’s the studios, the writers, the producers, it usually takes years before the town catches up on the importance of that technology. Recall, 23 years ago when the once vaunted music industry opted to spend a bunch of money in suing Napster for illegal file sharing of music that may have resulted in a short victory for the record companies that won, but ultimately led to the destruction of the “big four” record labels due to those same companies not using monies to adapt to the new technologies. Fast-forward six years later to when Netflix launched an internet-based television company, networks laughed off the prospect of any success and instead focused more efforts on fruitless endeavors like bilingual TV networks, cable-gated internet content, and putting entire seasons of television on DVD (actually that last part was probably a good idea given the way modern streaming services refuse to serve uncensored or politically-incorrect content).

So, when I tell you that studios are in the right in its latest counter-proposal that features artificial intelligence as one of the core areas of dispute, don’t get mad. Writers simply don’t understand AI and to propose any regulations on a tech they know nothing about is pretty hilarious, almost as hilarious as Elon hopeful the government will step in and do the same. By the way, this is the same government that is JUST getting to Tiktok.  Which brings me to an area where I think studios and writers should really focus more of their efforts on that seems to be a bit more controllable…social media accounts that illegally share television content. That’s right…and for the most part…the networks are in on it.

Here’s the problem. Right now, you can go on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tiktok, Snapchat, and every other social network you can think of and see both verified AND unverified accounts illegally sharing content that they have created and uploaded. I have spent hours on Tiktok scrolling and I can just as easily watch unauthorized clips from the likes of Family Guy, Pawn Stars, Shark Tank, ALL of the news networks, pretty much anything you can think of, and those clips are being shared from accounts NOT paying any sort of royalties for the sharing of that content.

I spoke with a head of a popular Twitter cartoon handle that I won’t divulge publicly the account, here’s what he had to say about clips from supposedly union-affiliated content that he is uploading and sharing with the network (also being withheld) fully knowing about it thereby circumventing the royalties being paid out for new media, “both on YouTube and Twitter we have talked with [network] people that approve of the work we do specifically because we do it without seeking profit, including [network’s]PR Team, and the hope is to continue to do that under said constraints. 

If I were a member of a union and I knew that MY studio was re-sharing my writing work, production works, voice-work (yes this was largely for animated content), I would be pissed and I would make THIS a focal point of my negotiations. Now some might see some of these illegal accounts as being benevolent, spreading word about content due to the fact that network PR can be very lazy. Add in the fact that marketing budgets are shrinking across the board due to the fact that there is SO much new content, it can be difficult for a network to figure out how to put any money behind anything. That’s why this next excerpt is so interesting, again from the aforementioned source, “we originally received copyright notifications (not strikes), but after working with them (the network), now we received none.”

This means network employees are knowingly breaking copyright laws by allowing illegal sharing of content with NO payment of any kind going to the show creators OR producers. In fact, “creators in particular have thanked us for sharing promos”. Interestingly the series’ that the account holder has mentioned, has since been canceled, so it must not have helped THAT much. It should be noted, we here at Bubbleblabber NEVER share content without expressed authorization from networks and we really only do so by way of the media companies’ verified accounts which are authorized users that make payments on said clips under the new media banner. We would never rip content pieces from DVDs, TV broadcasts, or even endorse YouTube channels that do such things. However, OTHER news publications use this shit all of the time. Every day there are teams of articles posted on websites (I won’t call anybody out) that re-shares Reddit posts or Twitter posts that contain illegally uploaded content and comment on it with no recourse coming to those who have produced such content. The publications who do this make the ad revenue, as do the social networks, and none of this money is accounted for. The amount of revenue being missed here has to be astonishing. Interestingly, the music business has honed this in and has seen a nice rebound in social networks paying for the use of their music for the purposes of being featured on user-generated content. And while unverified and illegal file sharing accounts say they are doing things for good of the fandom, my mother always taught me when something’s too good to be true, it usually is…chances are there’s some money being made on the back-end that the networks don’t know about.

For my money, THIS is the lower hanging technological fruit versus even artificial intelligence. Really, if the social networks want to continue to allow illegal file sharing, they should pay royalties to media companies that can then have increased funds to divert to the unions.