Who Are the Brain Police?
By Roger Paradiso
“We are pleased to report that we have reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP on a new four-year collective bargaining agreement…As is our longstanding practice, details of the agreement will not be released until the Board has completed its review.”
—DGA negotiating team.
While the DGA went down to the wire in negotiations with the film producers AKA streamers, it is important to recognize the decline of all the influencers in our current motion picture and television industry. To put this changing environment in context, let’s look at where we were in 2000 and where we are today.
In 2000, the United States was the dominant force in film. We used film stock for the entire 20th century. Since 2003 when film died, we entered the digital world. Now our moving pictures are streamed in the digital world. This was a major disruption.
The difference from 2000 to 2025 was due to the change over to a streaming system. Is Netflix a movie studio company now? They exist in over 190 countries and have given us algorithms ─ another disruption in deciding what gets made and how. Many people don’t ever go to a movie theater. They sit home and watch Netflix and what Netflix thinks is a movie. I guess we won’t know if Netflix and the streamers win the battle for your “movie” viewing until the Hollywood sign is replaced with the Netflix sign.
By 2010 the film system had produced a century of profit and protection from piracy. Why didn’t they have piracy? Because it is really hard to steal film from theaters or even from labs with heavy and highly visible reels and film cans. It’s hard to miss someone running down the street with five film cans weighing 40 lbs. each. And yes, they had people checking tickets to make sure the money grosses were somewhat accurate. This scrutiny does not happen today. So why did they change from film to digital media? It was cheaper and it cut out the middle person ─ the theater exhibitor. Movie theaters are dying. In 2026, there are 200 movie theaters in New York state.
A friend who is a film technician said, “It would be very easy to steal a stream or steal a thumb drive which would fit in your pocket.” And yes, piracy is at a very high and costly rate. And who pays for this cost? The old school studios, the unwanted “indie filmmakers” and the viewing public. Just a side note: thousands of indie films are made in the United States every year. Yet a very small number get a streaming release. And even fewer get a studio release. Cinema, another name for the indie art films, is on the endangered list.
Before streaming, or should we say B.S., films were made for a movie theater. The studios actually had to make the movies which cost a whole lot before they could exhibit them. Netflix rented movies and made a fortune in the days before they made content, and became a parasite on the system. They have neutered Hollywood with the help of the internet, streaming and algorithms. They are destroying an art form. What is left for us to look forward to? Another disrupter called GAI.
GAI is a common acronym in technology that stands for Generative Artificial Intelligence. It refers to AI tools (such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Claude) designed to create new content — including text, images, audio, and video — rather than just analyzing existing data.
─ UMass Global Library.
How will this affect movies? We don’t know yet. It is evolving way past films. Who are these AI people?
Top companies in world based on Forbes, Copilot, Seeking Alpha and others include Open AI, Databricks, Anthropic, XAI (Musk), Amazon, Google, Apple, FB Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Intel, Oracle, and IBM. Most are based in Silicon Valley but there are thousands of smaller companies around the world trying to become the next Open AI.
Mark Zuckerberg FB/Meta, Sam Altman Open AI, XAI Elon Musk, and Sundar Pichai (Google) are all seen as key figures in the AI revolution. These players will control much of what we hear and see in the future. These are the brain police. Who is regulating them? Not Trump’s America at the present moment. Most other countries are working on guard rails. And then there is the WIPO – World Intellectual Property Organization which is the United Nations of the internet space.
We need our government to regulate this for the public good ─ and to prevent a potential danger which many scientists are predicting. GAI could cost us millions of jobs while operating data centers that take our water and electricity without fair compensation. Government needs to keep GAI from being militarized and used in harmful ways for public consumption.
It is a daunting task. The major art form of film is gone with the wind. Now they are talking about making robot crews and immersive products. You can actually shoot in a location without ever going there using GAI.
I used Forbes, whatever is left of my intelligence, WIPO and Copilot as my main sources for this article.
Top 5 Film Production Countries in 2000
Dominated by India, the United States, China, Japan, France
─ Google AI Overview, Theater Seat Store and Reddit.
Top 5 Film Production Countries in 2025
1. India – WIPO – World Intellectual Property Organization+1.
2. Nigeria – (Nollywood) year http://www.movietimetoday. com+1.
3. China – WIPO – World Intellectual Property Organization.
4. United States (Hollywood) – WIPO – World Intellectual Property Organization+1.
5. Japan – WIPO – World Intellectual Property Organization.
