The digital age has created new challenges in intellectual property disputes. The introduction of content being distributed on social media platforms and artificial intelligence systems have defanged many traditional IP laws, leaving creators scrambling for new solutions.
Once truly “social,” Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and others have become content-generation machines, with billions of posts, images, and videos shared daily. Their massive scale of creation has made ownership and attribution nearly impossible to track, and when users post content, they’re rarely aware that they long ago granted these companies extensive license rights through terms of service agreements. Viral content frequently gets reposted without proper attribution, creating a culture where creativity is rewarded with attention and appropriated at the same time.
Artificial intelligence has introduced entirely new questions to the IP conversation. When an AI system creates artwork, writing, or music after being trained on human-created works, who owns what it generates? Is it the creator of the AI? The developers who trained it? The users who provided the perfect prompts? It may be no one at all, or the creators whose original work the developers trained the AI on. Our copyright laws became outdated with the advent of AI: Designed for human creators, legal scholars are struggling to address these scenarios. Landmark cases are beginning to establish precedents, but much-needed legislation is far behind technological advancement.
Enforcing intellectual property rights online presents other difficulties. The global nature of the internet means violations can occur across jurisdictions that have varying IP laws. Automated content identification systems like YouTube’s Content ID is trying to address infringement at scale, but it can generate false positives or miss fair-use applications. Additionally, live streams or temporary posts make enforcement close to impossible.
Knowing how to construct a new intellectual property framework for the digital age presents a real challenge. Overly restrictive approaches risk stifling innovation, but insufficient protection undermines creativity.
The best solutions may be improved tools for tracking and attributing digital content, as well as new models of compensation that reflect the nature of online creation. As blockchain and digital fingerprinting technologies mature, the hope is that they will offer new ways to establish provenance and protect creators’ rights.
As we wait for better ways to reconcile our old view of intellectual property with the reality of digital creation, there is still a need to protect rights. If you believe your intellectual property has been appropriated, contact us today.