In the game of Three-Card Monte, a hustler uses sleight-of-hand to draw the unsuspecting victim’s eyes to the wrong card, meanwhile keeping the actual “money card” safely tucked away, out of sight. It is ultimately a con game, and so, of course, is a natural fit for the hustlers of... Read more
In early March, before COVID-19 changed the world, VICE published an irresponsible piece of “journalism” headlined “Gen Z Is Leading a New Wave of Internet Piracy”. Now that we’ve settled into our quarantine routine, we want to talk about how bad it is. VICE’s piece, written by Canadian “author” Sarah Hagi,... Read more
By Justin Sanders
It was a dark and stormy night when the online forum r/nosleep closed its doors to the general public. The horror story-themed Reddit forum (known as a “subreddit”) had built a massive following by curating some of the scariest tales on the internet. Its authors had a gift for the spine-tingling detail... Read more
By Ruth Vitale
Stop us if you have heard this one before: a Google-funded organization has cited Google-backed research to spout misleading piracy claims that benefit Google. This time, the guilty party is Re:Create, a purported coalition of “Innovators, Creators and Consumers United for Balanced Copyright.” They started circulating a “fact” sheet titled Copyright Infringement on the... Read more
By Justin Sanders
With their expressive visuals and cartoony speech bubbles, comic books offer the breeziest of reading pleasures, even when the material is dark or heavy. But don’t mistake “breezy” for “easy.” In their acclaimed comic book series, Crowded, the self-described, British-born “comics line art duo” of Ro Stein and Ted Brandt flex an illustrative panache so... Read more
With streaming entrenched as the dominant form of video consumption online, it’s easy to forget that piracy via the illegal downloading of actual files (AKA the old-fashioned way), remains alive and well. In fact, according to digital piracy data firm MUSO, torrent-based digital theft makes up around 20 percent of all... Read more
By Justin Sanders
Let’s be clear – it’s difficult to make a living in any creative pursuit. However, it’s especially difficult to make a living as an author. Say you have the temerity to actually, against all odds, write a book – which, for most people, takes years of toil and strife. Now, you actually have to... Read more
By Mark Leibowitz
Originally published in Morning Consult. Image by Todd M. LeMieux. As a commercial photographer and director, I’ve had the opportunity to shoot all over the world for the world’s largest companies. I love my job, and the travel, but sometimes I wish my photos didn’t travel quite so well. The... Read more
Advice for mainstream publications writing articles about streaming piracy: It is a crime. Treat it as such. It is a crime that impacts millions of creative livelihoods. Acknowledge them. Did we mention that it is a crime? Maybe don’t implicitly endorse it? On Monday, December 16, 2019, one of the... Read more
By Justin Sanders
“Black Belts vs. Pirates” is the last of our three-part series about what it takes to build a successful content platform in the age of streaming piracy. In Part 1, “The Black Belt,” we dug into the life and times of entrepreneur Jimmy Kane, and learned how a grainy YouTube... Read more