One Friday in April, piracy sites went missing from the search engine DuckDuckGo’s index. “Holy sh*t!” we thought. “Has DuckDuckGo decided to step up and help the creatives whose livelihoods are harmed by widespread piracy? Could they be a shining example of accountability amidst an irresponsible group of Silicon Valley... Read more

To have a safe and functional internet, we need platforms to take real responsibility for stemming crime. That shouldn’t be a controversial statement in 2022, especially in the face of the pile-up of illegal and nefarious activities they facilitate. If you need just one more example, though, then look no... Read more

Slumming in the Reddit forum r/Piracy recently, we stumbled upon a surprising debate. “Is there anything you wouldn’t pirate?” suspicious_carl asked. The responding pirates fall into four categories. Only one is worth saving. Asshats Asshats revel in piracy as if it were merely mischief instead of causing a great deal... Read more

Recently, while reviewing the public comments filed with the United States Copyright Office as it examines the need to promote Standard Technical Measures (STMs) to prevent digital copyright infringement (as one does), we noticed something peculiar. We were surprised to see that there were thousands of comments on such an... Read more

By this point, who is surprised to hear a tech startup is complicit with digital piracy – even when it isn’t brazenly named OpenSea? Since 2017, OpenSea has hosted a cryptocurrency marketplace for Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), unique identifiers for digital objects. Although these technologies are new and, to many of... Read more

If you watched President Biden’s State of the Union address, you saw Members of Congress giving a standing ovation to former Facebook executive Frances Haugen – “former” being the operative word, as Haugen changed her title from “Product Manager” to “Whistleblower” in late 2021. In her September 2021 testimony before... Read more

Once in a while, we step off our soapbox, unclench our fists, and lay down our megaphone so that we can publish an arts roundup. We’ll never let commercial-scale pirates off the hook, but we’re most formidable when remembering our passion for culture and creativity. It’s what motivates us to... Read more

Every Thanksgiving, we share reflections on some creative works from the year that we’ve appreciated. It’s one of our favorite holiday traditions, and it gives us a small break from burning digital pirates in effigy or demanding accountability for Big Tech. Just don’t think we’re going soft!  Seriously, the genius... Read more

When the Protecting Lawful Streaming Act (PLSA) was signed into law in 2020, it closed a loophole that allowed streaming pirates to avoid being charged with a felony – despite the fact that every other form of large-scale piracy was treated as a felony. This loophole would have been closed... Read more

In a recent blogpost, Amazon called on Facebook and similar platforms to work more diligently to shut down the numerous trolls who swamp Amazon’s site with fake product reviews: In the first three months of 2020, we reported more than 300 groups to social media companies, who then took a... Read more