We want to express our heartfelt solidarity with the individuals, families, and communities in crisis. Our nation is hurting. Centuries of violence against black communities have left us hoping for justice and for peace and equality. As a community, we must do better to promote reconciliation and equality for all.... Read more
By Justin Sanders
[All photos courtesy of Julian Fort] When we last spoke with Julian Fort, in September of 2018, he had recently completed his first feature film, The Midnighters. With a powerful lead performance from Leon Russom (The Big Lebowski), the indie thriller made the most of its shoestring budget and has... Read more
By Justin Sanders
The world’s most powerful internet platforms are even more powerful, and more dangerous, than ever. It sounds dramatic, but it’s true. Trapped in our homes during the time of coronavirus, we are more reliant on companies like Google and Facebook than ever before. So their continued failures to address their... 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
Consider the word “use.” It can mean both to “take, hold, or deploy (something) as a means of accomplishing a purpose” or to “exploit (a person or situation) for one’s own advantage.” There’s a latent hostility to the word “use” (use drugs, use other people, use up your remaining karma),... 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 Ruth Vitale
Here’s a direct plea to Google and Facebook. For too long, you’ve dragged your feet on harmful online conduct. It’s obvious that you don’t feel there are sufficient incentives (financial, legal, or PR) to make the systemic changes necessary to stop the spew of hate speech, fake news, foreign election meddling,... 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