Since the 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook’s reputation has been on a much-deserved downward spiral, while Google has happily stepped back and watched them grab the bulk of the bad news headlines. Meanwhile, during that same time, Google has paid an aggregate nine billion dollars worth of antitrust fines dished out by the... Read more
By Justin Sanders
“Easy to Use = Hard to Make” is the second 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 Kane’s background and learned how a grainy YouTube video from his parents’ martial... Read more
We do a lot of railing against the mammoth internet platforms (Google and Facebook) and other internet companies that are harming not just the creative industries but society at large. But, occasionally, it’s important to also take time to reflect on the good things that happen in between the lies,... Read more
By Justin Sanders
“The Black Belt” is the first of our three-part series about what it takes to build a successful content platform in the age of streaming piracy. Part 2 comes out December 10th! Before skateboarding was a multibillion-dollar industry, it was the fringe pursuit of a youth counterculture kick-flipping in backyards,... Read more
One thing became clear in the wake of our recent article on Pam Samuelson – she has a number of fans on “academic Twitter.” Several academics commented on our piece – some apparently without reading it – and challenged our facts and conclusions. We’ll stand by our facts. Her supporters... Read more
Here we are … again. Mark Zuckerberg was chewed out (again) on Capitol Hill. Google enraged their employees (again) by trying to spy on them and for siding with China (again). Cloudflare was outed (again) for refusing to crack down on criminal behavior on their network. In other words, here is the latest installment in our ongoing coverage... Read more
By Justin Sanders
If filmmaking is the creative industry’s most collaborative medium, then it follows that the job of production designer is creativity’s most collaborative position. Tasked with envisioning a project’s entire look and feel onscreen, the production designer touches nearly every aspect of life on set. “The conversations that you have go... Read more
Just when you thought the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) couldn’t possibly hate creatives more than they already do, they’ve now appointed one of the greatest anti-copyright champs of them all: UC Berkeley professor Pamela Samuelson. Over many decades in academia, Samuelson has worked diligently to weaken copyright protections so that massive internet companies... Read more
By Justin Sanders
So many shameful incidents, so little time… A flurry of chaotic political news has, if not diverted headlines away from Facebook in recent weeks, perhaps cooled them slightly. But make no mistake: Their trash fire of scandal and strife burns as hot as ever. Below, we present the latest updates... Read more
By CreativeFuture
Imagine you are an influential nonprofit, well-funded by some of the world’s wealthiest companies, with the noble goal of “defending digital privacy, free speech, and innovation.” Congress has just come back into session after a lengthy hiatus. You have the resources to take up any issue you want, and boy,... Read more