Intellectual Property
Oct. 2, 2025
The AI copyright war: Why licensing may be our only chance at peace
The music industry's 1990s sampling battles mirror today's AI copyright disputes: both pit innovation against ownership, both sparked chaos and lawsuits, and in both cases, the path forward lies not in endless litigation but in creating predictable licensing systems that balance creativity with compensation.
Jeffrey Kravitz
Neutral
Alternative Resolution Centers
Phone: (310) 474-0867
Email: jkravitz@arc4adr.com
Jeffrey Kravitz is a neutral with Alternative Resolution Centers with broad experience in entertainment, intellectual property, business, and insurance matters. As an entertainment litigator for more than 20 years, he represented production companies, studios, insurers, and policyholders concerning copyright infringement, invasion of privacy and coverage questions. He has mediated and arbitrated a diverse range of cases in both federal and state courts.
Part I: Trouble in River City -
The 1990s sampling wars
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, music faced an identity crisis. Hip-hop was exploding, and with it came the rise of "sampling," lifting snippets of existing recordings and weaving them into new songs. A drumbeat from James Brown, a bass line from Queen, a guitar lick from Led Zeppelin, these fragments became the raw materials of an entirely new musica...
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