"Disney" isn't the culprit here!

Acceptable to whom? Consumers? Or Luddites and a guild whose interests aren’t entirely aligned with consumers?

I am no fan of Disney, but they appear to have been doing everything by the book.

Only some of the copyright issues. The issue of whether AI creations are protected by copyright, for example, would remain.

Long story short is that they played ball with every demand the recording industry made regarding how selling audio clips would work when other nascent music store experiments wouldn't. Industry gets to dictate quality? Got it. Online store releases after physical releases? Got it. Encrypted? Strongest stuff the government will let us put in.

And then one day... Apple just stopped selling the music encrypted. The recording industry had a bloody fit about it. And Apple's response was "Well, customers hate it. And honestly, who else will you do business with? You gave us all the contracts. What are you gonna do, found your own software companies from scratch to compete with us? If that was on the table you'd have done it already. You don't know how." It took a little while for streaming alternatives to crop up, but it was amazing to watch Apple call an entire industry's bluff.

All this to say... Wouldn't be the first time a content gatekeeping industry's myopia let it become the instrument of its own unmaking. People heavily invested in the old model have some of the hardest challenges fully realizing what new model novel technology can enable.

I predict the Disneys of the world will discover that their memetic monopolies become badly challenged in a world where content creation is so cheap that, while of course they can build their staple of wholly-owned IP for AI generation... So can everyone else, which means the shape of the competitive field will change, close to overnight. And if they try to compete by standing in front of the tide and bidding it to not come in, they'll eventually be cut down by someone who promises to give them everything they want... And then takes their empire from them.

Far too many people make their fortunes gatekeeping access to resources.