The Robin Hoods of Culture
The viral spread of the series Heated Rivalry at the end of 2025—months before its official release on streaming platforms in Latin America in February 2026—has brought an age-old yet increasingly urgent debate back to the forefront: what happens to copyright when culture circulates faster than the mechanisms designed to protect it?
When culture and mass audiences move faster than protection, consumption doesn’t stop—it finds new paths. That’s where, in my view, the focus should be. This timing gap explains much of today’s copyright conflicts, and as long as the response comes too late, the system loses meaning for those who consume culture. That’s why, rather than punishing afterward, the real challenge is to act beforehand. Infringement matters, of course, but the underlying issue is still timing.
Real-Time Infringement
It’s fascinating to watch copyright unfold before our very eyes. And it’s even more astonishing when what passes unnoticed before us is, in fact, an infringement—the use of a protected work without the rights holder’s authorization. Those of us who work in intellectual property, or even simply consume culture, know that infringement almost always moves faster than enforcement. In copyright, that asymmetry is even more pronounced.
Unauthorized circulation happens in real time, driven by social media, instant messaging, and digital platforms, while enforcement mechanisms still operate with post-damage logic. The question isn’t only whether the response comes too late, but whether we can even measure how late it arrives—and how much value we assign to that loss.
Heated Rivalry as a Catalyst for Debate
The Heated Rivalry phenomenon—a Canadian series that began to go viral across social networks around November 2025, even before becoming officially available in Latin America—revives the classic discussion around piracy, unauthorized circulation, and organized communities. But it does so in a context that is radically different and deeply characteristic of our times.
The legal rules are well known. In legal terms, the act is the same: reproduction without consent constitutes infringement. From a legal standpoint, the law makes no distinction between formats or scope. Yet in terms of impact, the landscape has changed completely. Photocopying a book in a shop is not the same as the instant, global, and free circulation of a digital book—or an entire series—within hours.
The real question is whether we continue to measure infringement only in the abstract, or if we start measuring its actual impact. Because if everything is treated the same, then the discussion could end right here.
Economic Loss and Cultural Gain
From an economic perspective, the debate usually centers on what’s lost—revenues, licenses, exclusivity, distribution windows. But from a cultural standpoint, which is inseparable from copyright, the question becomes: when is something gained, and for whom?
There are long-standing views—even endorsed by artists—that downplay the harm of unauthorized copying when it helps broaden an audience.
In the early 2000s, Argentine musician Ale Sergi, one of the leaders of the popular band Miranda!, said in interviews that he didn’t mind signing pirated CDs brought by fans. His stance was clear: as an artist, he prioritized having his music circulate and reach more people, understanding that the economic discussion was one for the record industry—with which the band had a contract. Circulation as cultural value, monetization as a structural issue.
Transposed to today’s audiovisual ecosystem, that reasoning raises far more complex questions.
Who Protects Copyright Today?
Who is the real guardian of copyright when content goes viral? The author, the producer, the streaming platform, the sponsors, the state when it funds production? At what point does responsibility stop being individual and become systemic?
The traditional answer—that the rights holder must protect their own rights—is clearly insufficient when faced with massive, fragmented, multi-platform circulation, where content is replicated, adapted, and constantly reappears.
Investing in control mechanisms isn’t just about protecting profits—it’s about protecting cultural incentives: the possibility of creating with some sense of control and predictability. No one creates with complete freedom if they know their work will immediately become unmanageable. Yet, at the same time, overly restrictive protection can stifle legitimate circulation. That balance isn’t theoretical—it’s operational, and it happens in real time.
Hybrid Protection Models
Platforms like Wattpad have long offered an interesting model. They allowed broad initial circulation and then activated protection mechanisms when a work demonstrated significant impact. They let stories grow until truly noteworthy cases emerged—and then protected them, almost like talent scouts. Community first, protection later.
It wasn’t just about monetization but about supporting and safeguarding creative careers. That hybrid logic seems far more aligned with current cultural dynamics than a purely reactive system.
Unstoppable Viralization
Heated Rivalry starkly exposed the system’s inability to respond. A low-budget series, based on relatively unknown books—at least in Latin America—became a transnational phenomenon fueled by TikTok and Instagram, particularly among “the girls,” as the fanfic community calls themselves.
Within an hour of each episode’s release every Friday, versions of varying quality—from distributors HBO and Crave—were already circulating with subtitles in multiple languages.
Today, most viewership takes place through unauthorized channels, mainly via messaging apps, where content is shared and reappears with astonishing speed. There were no territorial windows, no time windows, no effective control.
The Role of Artificial Intelligence
In this scenario, another inevitable player emerges: artificial intelligence. Automated subtitles, constantly mutating channels to avoid takedowns, and adaptive, self-regenerating distribution. Tools that reduce time, barriers, and costs.
The same technology that enables infringement could also anticipate and limit it. The question is why it’s used mostly to infringe rather than to prevent—and why content that circulates massively since November 2025 only arrives officially months later, in February 2026, in a world where attention spans last mere seconds.
Affinity, Generations, and Timing
For those of us who work in intellectual property, this shouldn’t be seen as an anecdotal problem. It’s primarily a problem of timing. Cultural phenomena are no longer measured by geography but by affinity. People from different countries consume the same things at the same time, regardless of borders.
A twenty-year-old in Argentina likely shares more cultural consumption habits with someone in Canada or Romania than with her slightly older sister. Algorithms can measure almost everything—but they don’t seem to be applied as effectively to anticipate cultural consumption. That must change if we truly want to keep protecting creators.
There’s also a generational variable we can’t ignore. For years, it was normal to wait months for a translated book to arrive in South America. Those who grew up waiting for the Spanish editions of Harry Potter remember that delay as part of the cultural experience. Today, such a wait is unthinkable—not only because of technological possibilities but also because of our collective impatience.
This conversation needs to happen now, as Gen Z enters adulthood, increasingly occupies decision-making spaces, and drives cultural consumption—knowing that the generations that follow have even less patience.
The Robin Hoods of Culture
When legal access to cultural content doesn’t arrive on time, infringement starts to feel like a solution. In that scenario, illegal channels take on a dangerous symbolic role—that of the cultural Robin Hood: the idea that access is being “democratized,” while behind the scenes entire industries depend on that economic flow, sustained by those who pay for the benefit of others who already consumed for free.
At the same time, the debate cannot be reduced merely to monetization. Copyright should not be an obstacle to culture—because it exists thanks to it. But for it to keep fulfilling its protective role, it needs to be rethought in preventive, technological, and strategic terms.
It’s not just about punishing; it’s about getting there first. When culture and mass consumption outpace protection, the desire to access creation doesn’t wait for authorized channels. Readers, film lovers, and music and art enthusiasts maintain their bond with works even when legal access isn’t available. At that point, the discussion ceases to be purely legal and becomes structural.
This isn’t about justifying or romanticizing infringement—but neither can we ignore how cultural consumption works today. If legal access doesn’t keep pace with real circulation, the system loses relevance.
Getting there first isn’t a slogan, it’s a necessity. But I wonder: does anyone really know how to beat time?
For further information please contact giuliana.gallo@ojamip.com
