Commentary: Hollywood’s piracy problem on TikTok – if you can’t beat them, use them

HARDLY AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT

What they’re doing obviously infringes copyrights, but in sharp contrast to previous generations of pirates, they needn’t fear phalanxes of entertainment industry lawyers waiting to take them to court or Washington lobbyists demanding legislative intervention.

That’s because, unlike videotapes, DVDs and ripped AV1 files, a string of snippets on TikTok is hardly an existential threat to the industry.

Until someone – or something, since this could be a job for artificial intelligence – comes up with an easy way to seamlessly thread together snippets into an uninterrupted movie or TV show, it’s hard to imagine substantial numbers of people will take to this form of viewing. For now, the effort required to hunt down, or even just shut down, the pirates may not be worth the outcome.

Platforms like TikTok and YouTube do a certain amount of policing and have grievance mechanisms for copyright violation, but United States copyright law (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) gives them substantial legal cover from the activities of pirates. The job of finding and filing suit against them falls mainly to Hollywood studios and TV production companies.

Industry organisations like the Motion Picture Association can’t help much: Jan van Voorn, chief of global content protection, told the Wall Street Journal that they are geared to fight commercial piracy but not the nickel-and-dime variety.