Piracy is Piracy: How Copyright Infringement Turned Disney and Universal Into Allies
Jul 23, 2025 | Law Student Blog,
By Olivia Miller, Southern Illinois University Simmons Law School, Juris Doctor Candidate, 2027
For nearly a century, The Walt Disney Company and Universal Studios have been major competitors in the entertainment industry. In 1927, Walt Disney and his animators created a character called “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.” Disney would later lose its rights to Oswald when Universal took control of the character. While this loss placed a significant strain on Disney’s relationship with Universal, it ultimately led to Walt’s creation of Mickey Mouse. Despite Disney and Universal having their share of disputes over the years, a recent copyright infringement lawsuit has brought the longstanding adversaries together.
On June 11, 2025, Disney and Universal filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Central District of California against Midjourney—a generative artificial intelligence service. Through Midjourney’s “Image Service” program, users can generate high-quality images based on text prompts. Use of this service comes with a hefty fee, costing upwards of $120 per month for a subscription. Soon, subscribers will also be able to generate high-quality videos through Midjourney’s Video Service.
Disney and Universal’s suit against Midjourney alleges that the AI company’s generative Image Service was “. . .developed using innumerable unauthorized copies of Plaintiffs copyrighted works, and operates by reproducing, publicly displaying, making available, and distributing additional infringing copies and derivatives of those works.” In the complaint, Plaintiffs assert that Midjourney gathers their copyrighted works using tools like bots and streamrippers to collect data. Midjourney then cleans the collected data, which creates a “new copy” of the copyrighted work. These “new copies” are subsequently used to train the Image Service.
In 2023, Midjourney generated over 300 million in revenue from its Image Service. Alongside the generation of these unauthorized images by Midjourney, the complaint notes that the company promotes its brand using these generated images. Disney, Universal, and their subsidiaries express extreme frustration with Midjourney throughout the complaint. In it, the plaintiffs’ also took time to note their strong opposition to piracy, stating “Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism. Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing.”
Even with the rapid rise of piracy cases in the court system, especially those involving artificial intelligence, piracy is not a new concept. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, digital piracy was prevalent in the music business. So much so, many music industry professionals believed piracy was going to destroy the business at the time. Up until the 2010s, LimeWire was a popular site used to illegally file share music, images, software, and videos, and even before that Napster performed a similar function.
While piracy has had and does continue to have a negative impact on mass media companies, smaller artists tend to feel the effects of piracy much more severely. In its complaint, Disney and Universal note that “Midjourney’s bootlegging business model and defiance of U.S copyright law are not only an attack on Disney, Universal, and the hard-working creative community that brings the magic of movies to life, but are also a broader threat to the American motion picture industry which has created millions of jobs and contributed more than $260 billion to the nation’s economy.” Furthermore Midjourney, “targets ‘artists’ and users involved in ’commercial art project[s],’ a community that includes many of the human creative professionals that Disney and Universal have and continue to heavily invest in.” It’s clear, from Disney and Universal’s perspective, that Midjourney’s business model not only targets large media companies but directly causes “willful” harm to small artists and creatives.
At the close of their complaint, Disney and Universal point out preventative measures Midjourney could have and should have taken to avoid copyright infringement. The first measure Plaintiffs recommend includes Midjourney rejecting text prompts entered by users into the Image Service that requests the display or download of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted characters. The second measure is using a technology to screen for infringing image outputs. Disney and Universal note that the above two measures are technological means already adopted and in use by other AI companies.
While this lawsuit is still in the beginning stages, Hollywood is eagerly awaiting the case’s outcome. According to Variety, the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) is just one of many organizations that represent thousands of creatives that are anticipating a decision in favor of Disney and Universal. Just over two years ago, the WGA and its screenwriters were on a 148 day strike, fighting for, among other things, safeguards against artificial intelligence in scriptwriting.
Nevertheless, the infringement case against Midjourney may not be an easy decision for the Central District of California. Shortly after Disney and Universal’s lawsuit was filed, the Northern District of California released a major decision on AI and copyright. That court partially ruled in favor of artificial intelligence company, Anthropic, outlining that the company may train their AI software using copyrighted text. Such use, however, must be “transformative” and not harmful to the copyright holder(s). While partially ruling in favor of Anthropic, the Northern District’s opinion clearly detailed that piracy is still piracy, highlighting that mass storage of pirated, copyrighted works may not be fair use.
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