As a part of a left-wing union that filed a winning lawsuit against the New York Times on a similar issue, there is some sympathy for the writer’s position here. In that case, The New York Times v. Tasini went to the Supreme Court, where they ruled 7-2 that writers were entitled to additional compensation for reusing their work when new internet technology allowed publishers to monetize independent content online. As in the case here, new technologies, in this case streaming and AI, require new contract and royalty structures.

But streaming and AI may not be the game changers both sides in the industry hoped it would be. For writers and actors, AI might be the greatest tool for intellectual property theft since the days before international copyright laws protected writers like Dickens from being ripped off by American publishers. But no matter the technology, the old rule of garbage in, garbage out applies. And there has been a lot of Hollywood garbage lately, and the public isn’t buying it. …

Hollywood is fighting harder and harder for less and less. Like the auto unions that fought innovation, this battle may well kill their golden goose, already on life support. Netflix is about the only streaming service that has made money. This may explain management’s reluctance to pay more and why AI replacement for writers and actors has such a bottom-line appeal.

[We usually have a slot reserved for the top post at PJM, but this is worth a separate entry. It’s easy to dismiss shrill antics from Fran Drescher, but AI really is a risk for both the writers and actors in Hollywood, and the proliferation of streaming services requires some sort of accounting for fair compensation. I’m not usually a fan of labor actions, but this is a bit different. Let’s put it this way — if Bob Iger and Jeffrey Katzenberg never had to worry about writers and actors and relied on AI to regurgitate ideas instead, do you think the content would become less woke or more woke? It might well be the same either way, but at least the studio chiefs would have to deal with others for content development. — Ed]