Here's what I think is happening, which leads to another issue. Sound effects libraries, and even VFX element libraries are commonly shared. For better or for worse, that what happens on a show. I've seen it. Everyone's working together and adds to the asset pool for a project. At the end of the project, everyone copies the updated asset pool before moving on to the next project. This is obviously a breach of the license, but until recently, there was no way to enforce it and it does happen all the time. With all these assets having been bounced around, nobody knows who the original purchaser of said assets is. While all this is wrong, it happens on large shows and small shows, which could explain why they all use same Video Copilot blood hit, or a certain sound effect. Another problem from this occurs when the show is publicly posted on a site like YouTube. If a particular sound effect is flagged by Content ID, and if you can't prove you have a license, then YouTube gives ALL ad revenue to the license holder of the sound effect.
Think about that.
Here's a personal example: I was young and starting out. Around 2004, my local library had a sound effects CD that I checked out. I copied the sounds and the enclosed license to my computer and not knowing better, ended up using some of the sounds in my first feature film which I shot in 2007.
Years later, (2019 or so), I uploaded the film to YouTube as an Unlisted link, no ads or anything. I shared it on these boards as a laughable example of a first feature. YouTube says I have a copyright claim for the sound of birds in the background of one scene. Due to that, YouTube enabled monetization, placing ads on my unlisted film and claimed ALL of the revenue for the license holder of the sound effect that was used for maybe a total of 15 seconds. This is ridiculous.
While my example isn't anything crazy due to it being an unlisted film with less than 100 views, it illustrates a point.
I've also had this issue with short films where I make the music myself using loops in something Mixcraft Studio. I get loops flagged all the time in the Content ID system and I have to write in, protest, explain I have a license yada yada yada. But while I'm protesting, guess what? Some other person is getting all of MY royalties and I never get them back after it's settled.
"Sound is 50% of the movie". Okay, then give them 50% of the money, not all of it. It's nuts.
Sorry to have launched into this, I'm just surprised we don't hear more of this kind of thing regarding studio shows/films given I know for a fact that stuff is shared. They must either have a really good legal team or they are immune from it.
Couple of things here.
Most licenses do include provisions for sharing within a studio, though some do include a limit of "seats" or simultaneous users. This is common practice, since most studios like my own buy assets for a project, rather than for a person. As far as everybody copy pasting digital assets, there has been a shift in how it's enforced that makes it easier for creators and harder for pirates. So in the case of SP for example, all of the sound assets are licensed directly to the channels where they are intended for use, meaning that if someone steals a sample and tries to reuse it elsewhere, it gets auto flagged. Older, offline libraries do have issues, and I expect it's becoming an outdated format for many of the reasons you listed.
Visual stuff is harder for them to track, but you would have to parade your stolen goods in front of literally 3 million people before you could get a check for 5 grand max, so it wouldn't really be a smart decision to do that.
Indietalk is right, and tons of people make modifications of existing assets, like speeding up tempos and the like, but it's pretty transparent, and wouldn't be effective at hiding a theft on any scale. You can see what I'm talking about in the video Fetus posted, where the guy can identify a sped up version instantly. The AI's will catch up to this soon, so not a long term problem.
There are some issues with all this, for example, legitimate synth patches get used at default tempos, not theft, fully acceptable. Then 3 people try to copywrite that patch just middle c at 120 or similar. It happens. So when you buy a Roland phantom or something, you are buying those patches, for any use, and can end up getting flagged just because someone used the same keyboard first.
A complicating factor is music patent trolls, where several companies have built businesses around "midi match" meaning that they can start filing IP rights for any chord progression or melody they claim to own. It wouldn't be a problem, except that youtube enters what's basically a default judgement in favor of whatever company has the most money. So you write a loop on your keyboard at home, and it overlaps with one of the subsections of one of the 3 billion songs URICA has digitally filed, and they incorrectly file a notice on autopilot. It's your own original work and you can prove it, but your money has already been sent to a Russian billionaire who never played and instrument, and it's your responsibility to take a jet to Russia and iron it out in court over a 6 month period, and then you can have the rights to your 4 second drumloop back, once you defeat the team of lawyers with deep pockets from stealing from a million people a day on autopilot. It's the way that the law enters a default judgement for any rich corporation that could afford millions in legal paperwork, and then youtube puts the burden of defending themselves on penniless creators. I had a piano piece I wrote seized by some company out of Germany, because a few notes overlapped with a Serbian composer who died in the 1800s. It wasn't stolen, or copied, or anything, but to get my 3c in revenue back, I'd have needed to spend tens of thousands of dollars fighting a legal complaint issued by a privately owned robot. So for the billionth time in a row, the system is completely rigged to just hand money to whoever already has it.
I agree with you completely about companies pulling revenue over samples. Let's say I had 5 people working on a cell, and then we publish. 10 hours on mixing, 20 hours on cinematography, 30 hours on level design, etc. Then we accidentally use one of these copied packs like in Fetus's video. Instant legal judgement (until proven otherwise) taking 100% of our revenue for all the work in the video, because of that 1 second section where we used "fork clink on dinnerware no 3". This is not common sense, this is more thieving by corporate lawyers, who wrote their own rulebooks about what was fair, and invited anyone with 100 million dollars to spare to appeal their unfair decision. The catch is, it's a bit different to hire your own army of lawyers, when their army of lawyers is seizing all your profits every time you make 10 bucks.
It gets worse. As of last year, Youtube's legal staff rewrote the rules yet again. Now you don't actually have to do anything wrong at all. They "Decided" that if someone was too poor to defend themselves, that all revenue from all youtube channels that didn't generate thousands of hours of ad revenue, get sent directly to google, arguably the richest people in the world. Every cent from Save Point, every hour of work done by every person for 2 years, has been automatically sent to a person who never worked a single second, invested any money into, or even knew about the project, and that goes for literally tens of millions of other channels. Let me stress that we are in 100% compliance, and all our profits are seized and redistributed to the wealthy anyway. In case anyone else wondered why ads are all over your channel that doesn't "meet eligibility standards for monetization" this is why. Their lawyers wrote in a clause saying that you do the work and they get the paycheck.
Anyway the whole thing is kind of a dystopian tire fire from every angle.