Season 3 Kickoff: Lights, Camera, Legal Action! #301

In this episode of The Screen Lawyer Podcast, host Pete Salsich kicks off 2025 with a look at the bustling film scene in Saint Louis and the Midwest. He highlights the impact of the Missouri Motion Media Tax Credit, which has energized local film production, and previews exciting developments for the year ahead.  

Pete discusses upcoming cases involving AI, copyright, and TikTok, and teases a stellar lineup of guests slated for the spring. From legal trends to creative opportunities, this episode sets the stage for a dynamic year in media law and filmmaking in St. Louis.”

Original Theme Song composed by Brent Johnson of Coolfire Studios.
Podcast sponsored by Capes Sokol.

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Transcript

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It's cold here in Saint Louis to start off 2025, but it's hot in the Screen Lawyer Podcast studio because we've got a lot of great things coming up as we head into the new year. We're going to be talking about, the filming situation in Saint Louis and throughout the Midwest. Lots of activity in light of the Missouri motion media tax credit that came on board for a full year last year for the first time. We've got some great guests coming up on the podcast this spring, and we also are following a number of cases that started last year that we've been following dealing with AI, copyright and TikTok. And we're going to get into some of those as well. It's going to be a great season on The Screen Lawyer Podcast. So we're going to start it right now. Hey there. Welcome to the Screen Lawyer Podcast. I'm Pete Salsich, The Screen Lawyer. And it's great to be here with you. It's cold here in Saint Louis, man. We've had snow and ice and wind and stuff that I seem to remember. This is what winter was like for years when I was growing up. We haven't had it in a while. So in a way it's kind of cool. But enough driving on ice, it's a little bit old. We're going to try to get over that soon, but it's hot in The Screen Lawyer studio. And by that I mean there is a ton going on and we want to talk about on the podcast this upcoming season. So as you may know, we have, over the course of the last couple of years here on the podcast, we've mixed our content from some really interesting guests in the film world, in the television world, basically anything having to do with putting content on screens that's really taken a leap forward in the last year here in Saint Louis and throughout the state of Missouri, because of the Missouri motion media tax credit program that came on board late in 2023. And in 2024, you had its first full year of activity. And that's really important for anybody in the production world in this state, films, television, commercial production, all of those benefit by this tax incentive program. And it makes Missouri one of the more than 30 states that have some sort of film tax incentive. And it makes this very competitive for projects, both projects that are originating here, and also projects that are could be filmed anywhere, but chose to come to Saint Louis or in the state of Missouri because of the tax incentive. And we've had the good fortune to be involved with several of those. and want to talk a little bit about some of those is where they where they stand now and some of the things that are on the horizon. So among a couple of projects that I was personally involved in, the screen lawyer team was involved in, one is a cooking competition show called Spaghetti Wars that was filmed in the Italian neighborhood in Saint Louis called The Hill, very famous, Italian neighborhood. Truly one of the great Italian neighborhoods in the country. and this this program was filmed entirely locally, by the had amazing cast and crew, many of whom came from elsewhere to film here, which is an important recurring theme. And that I had a had a really kind of fun production, physical production. process in November. It's now headed into the post-production process, and we're excited about where they'll come in the new year. it was really kind of fun for me to spend the better part of a week on set in various ways, and obviously I'm not holding a camera or anything, but, you know, with so much going on, there were issues that came up in contracts in the middle of filming that we had to address with and just generally sort of because it was right here being around it, getting a chance to see the magic work was really fun for me. I've been doing entertainment law contracts for years, but rarely really end up on set and being part of something. So that was cool. A lot of fun. another cool project is a film that was shot in Springfield, Missouri, in October. and the film that, is getting ready to be submitted to festivals, as we speak. Very exciting project down there called Dust to Malibu. You should be hearing more about that in the coming weeks and months. but it was an example of a film that, again, could have been shot anywhere. But for reasons of the people involved, there was an opportunity to do it in Springfield because of the tax credit. And we were involved in helping put the team together and the financing for that. And that was a really cool project. And I got to go down visit set for that as well. So, you know, for me, a lot of the fun last fall was seeing some of these projects that I've been working on come to fruition, and both of those projects are still yet to see the screens. You will hopefully hear lots more about them. But, for for me, it was a lot of fun at this stage. And there's several more projects coming into town, in the coming weeks and months here in Saint Louis that we're going to be involved in. Nothing I can talk about yet in terms of titles or people, but that'll be coming. And as that happens, we'll update you with those. and one of the things I think that's happening here, and I want to touch a little bit on something that's happening right now that's really horrific. And that is, you know, when states like Missouri enact as tax credits and other states, part of the messaging to the film community at large is you don't have to film in LA, you don't have to film in New York. It's expensive and it's hard and it's a lot of work there. Come here to our state where we will make it easier on you. We have these tax incentive programs. We can we're very, very friendly to film productions, etc.. And maybe if you are originally from Saint Louis, or Missouri and you would like, hey, come back here, live here, you can, you know, have more in terms of your lifestyle and still do your profession. Obviously, that's a pitch that is, not anti Los Angeles, but it certainly looks somewhere else. But right now our eyes can't leave Los Angeles because we're watching these horrific wildfires happen. And, you know, I don't have any insight that the million other people haven't thought other than just watching. And it's terrible. it's so hard to see this happening. It would be true if it was happening anywhere. But in my world, I would say I'm paying very close attention. I have friends out there, colleagues, and at the moment, so far, as far as I know, everybody that I know is safe. But many, many people aren't. More than 24 people have been reported killed, more than 12,000 structures. destroyed. And that's I think probably those numbers are small, I don't know, and it's still going on. so I can't really have this conversation now without making note of that and taking a moment to just send our very best. And if you're out there, if you can donate some money to some of the causes or just whatever, maybe this is not a time to figure out who to blame and just try to help those who are suffering through there. And this is impacting our industry, and it is going to impact our industry for a while. I don't think there's any doubt about that. I don't know exactly how that will play out, but we saw a couple of years ago during the period when we had the writers strike and the actors strike at the same time, there were, you know, more than a year lost in some productions, and we could be seeing something like that coming forward. It's going to be something to watch. Maybe that means there's some opportunities here. And while we don't want to take something away from from LA as such, it is going to be important for those who are elsewhere in the country to help those people whose jobs may be in jeopardy find work elsewhere. And so we may be talking more about that as we go forward. But I wanted to give a shout out to all the first responders and people who are helping on that, because it's a massive task. another massive task in in a different way, are some of the cases that we've been following. You know, we it was a really interesting year in 2024, lots of lawsuits filed over the use of, large language model training systems for generative AI. Right. And we we talked about many of those cases. So they're sort of grouped into a number of different categories, but many of them are going to end up falling on this issue of fair use, something that we talk about a lot here on the podcast. so we've got, the New York Times versus Microsoft case, Thomson Reuters, which is Ross intelligent, Universal Music Group versus anthropic. Those are three of many and a number of cases have been consolidated together because the issues are essentially the same. But a lot of those deal with the basic argument that a generative AI system is going out to the internet wherever, and scraping many, many, many hundreds of thousands of copyrighted works. Now, what the AI owners are claiming, and I think it's so far essentially accurate, is that their training on those that's no, they argue, is no different than just reading many things. The fact that it can read hundreds of thousands when we can, might only read 100, doesn't really change the fact that that's what's happening. They're training on learning from those models, and then the output is not a copy of any one of those in particular. It's something else. And that that should be fair use. That is a transformative use of those original materials. That's the argument counter argument to that on a number of, situations has been that it does, in fact produce copyrighted works or that its only purpose is to infringe. I think that's a tougher argument, but the New York Times cases make an interesting argument, because they really talk about it impacting the commercial value of the original works, and that can be a real factor against the finding of fair use. and so it's going to be interesting to happen in many of those cases, as we got towards the end of 2024, got close enough where we might start to see substantive rulings on this. So in the Thomson Reuters case, there were summary judgment arguments late in December. We could be seeing, a ruling relatively soon on that. the other cases have moved along at a similar pace. And so what we're looking forward to here as we roll into early part of 2025 is hopefully to get one of those courts to issue a definitive, substantive ruling on the legal issues. And then, of course, it's going to go to the Court of Appeals, and chances are we'll end up with some kind of a split in the circuits. And this may eventually end up at the US Supreme Court, where it's probably going to have to weigh in and make some ultimate findings on how we apply the fair use doctrine in light of generative AI, the large language model training. we got some guidance a year ago, on fair use and one of the updated opinions, but it is in the, Prince Andy Warhol case. But that only gives us some language to work on. Now we're going to see what happens here. So we're watching those cases and we will dig into those substantively more deeply once we get some rulings. another case that's interesting that we're following. And it follows on something we talked about before. And this is Thaler versus Perlmutter. it's actually a couple of cases, but this is a case in which the challenges to the Copyright Office's rule that works that were wholly created by generative AI are not subject to copyright protection. So this builds on a longstanding, ruling or just doctrine and really better term, in the copyright world that we need substantial human authorship. It is human authorship that is protected under copyright law, not something else. Well, as you know, maybe a two years ago, there was a Copyright Office ruling about a, graphic novel where the images were all made via, AI, and that language was all written by humans and the Copyright Office when it found that out, actually recalled an original registration and ended up supplementing the registration by saying that only the language, the, the, dialog, the descriptions, the script that was human generated that's protectable. But the images, because they admitted they were all AI produced, were not subject to copyright protection. And therefore that means they would go into the public domain. And we've been sort of thinking about that as a fairly hard and fast rule. In fact, many contracts get we have slightly different language right now in a lot of contracts where we talk about whether new work is actually going to be generated with AI, or a promise that substantial human authorship will be involved, because you don't really want to take away some of the AI tools, but you need substantial human authorship. Well, that very rule, which I would have said is fairly set in stone, is being challenged right now in this, Thaler case. And it essentially the Copyright Office, there's a, machine created work. The Copyright Office refused the registration, the the content creator appeal that the district court affirmed the Copyright office. So now that's being challenged, working its way up. And part of the argument is that the owner of the machine is claiming that he can be owner because the machine is effectively this is like a work for hire. again, I don't know if it's going to win. I haven't dig that closely into the nuances of legal argument, but it's worth noting that that underlying principle is still being challenged. Maybe we'll get a definitive ruling that, affirms the Copyright Office position and kind of hope so, but we'll have to keep an eye on that, too. This is a an evolving world. And let's face it, our courts are evolving. And the people sitting on the ultimate Supreme Court, may not agree with things that have been said in the past, so we'll have to follow that. Lastly, and I just want to hint at this one, because this ruling could come out any day, maybe even before this episode airs. And that's the TikTok case that's sitting in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. And in the TikTok case, essentially maybe aware there's a federal law that requires TikTok to separate itself from its parent company, ByteDance, or else be banned. And that ban is scheduled to go into effect January 19th. So real soon. And so this is a sort of a rush to the US Supreme Court. that argument, oral arguments last week, and if you kind of read the tea leaves a little bit from the arguments, it's, it's hard to predict exactly where they're going to go. But you could certainly see possibly the ban being upheld. At issue is the argument by TikTok and its parent company that this ban is violates their First Amendment right. It's a free speech. It's a government action. It is. It's a federal law, and it is infringing or impinging upon this right to speak. That's their argument. And, because they say it cuts off all speech on the platform. Now, the government counters that argument by saying no, this isn't about TikTok. This is about ByteDance. This is about a foreign entity, a foreign adversary in many, in many, parlance. And that entity is controlling and perhaps manipulating, what we see. And that that's a national, security concern. And in a First Amendment analysis, what you do, you know, you start yes, this infringes speech. So then the government has to defend by saying there are some exigent circumstances, something unique, some, necessary requirement that overcomes this First Amendment protection and national security is the one that they're hanging their hat on. Now, if you read through some of the the oral argument, things you can see in some the, justices are questioning. Tick tock. So this isn't really about that. You can go somewhere else. They can. All this is just about controlling a foreign adversary. And we have a long history of enforcing laws that keep foreign countries out of controlling certain aspects of American life. And then other justices ask questions that say, well, you know, wait a second. Where remember, you know, is this more like the Red scare in the 50s? And we're doing things that really are not appropriate. And we should maybe we can handle this with a warning. Just let people know, hey, this content's from China. This content's from what? Whatever. And then you get into arguments. Well, nobody pays any attention to that. Nobody cares that they're manipulated. It's really hard to figure out exactly where this one is going to go. I can see the arguments both ways. A kind of sense. If I had to predict that in the current climate, the ban is likely to be upheld, because what happens if the ban is upheld is the TikTok will do something else. I don't think it will disappear despite its lawyers saying, look, this will just go away. but it's, you know, what companies often do in light of court rulings is they adjust, they come up with a different business approach, a different contractual relationship, etc.. So we'll see this one. we may have a ruling on it very, very soon. don't know for sure, but I think we likely have some kind of a ruling before the ban goes into effect on the 19th, even if it is just to delay the laws, going into effect for some period of time. We'll see. But those are among the many different things we're looking forward to talking about here on The Screen Lawyer Podcast. As we head into 2025, we'll have guests frequently, some more in the studio here and also on zoom. we'll probably go on the road more than once, which my team here always loves because it's a bit of a challenge, but we like to do it, and we will keep you up to date with all the things that are going on in the screen world here at The Screen Lawyer Podcast. So if you like what you're hearing, remember, I know we took a little time off over the holidays, but we'll be coming at you on a regular basis. So find us and follow us wherever you get your audio podcasts. And if you like what you're seeing on our YouTube channel, hit that like and Subscribe button so you'll get all of our content whenever you pop up. And lastly, check us out at TheScreenLawyer.com. We're always there. Take care.