“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
“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. Click here for Part 2. Before skateboarding was a multibillion-dollar industry, it was the fringe pursuit of a youth counterculture kick-flipping in backyards, empty... 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
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
The vice is tightening. The walls are closing in. The wolves are circling. Choose your phrase, but no doubt about it — the pressure’s on big-time for Facebook and Google. And it’s about time. In September, Attorneys General from eight states, as well as Washington D.C., opened an antitrust investigation into... Read more
Over the years, we are all faced with countless decisions that will determine the direction of our lives: Where to go to college. Where to live. Who to marry. What career to pursue. Where to work. What home to buy. Whether or not to have kids. How to raise them.... Read more
Throughout their relatively brief yet terrible reigns, both Facebook and Google have compiled enough scandals to fell most companies many times over. And yet, following both companies’ most recent earnings reports, their stocks only continue to rise. This is disheartening, frustrating, enraging, and terrifying. What does it say about us as a... Read more
The internet has given, and it has taken away. It has created abundant riches for some, and brought about staggering, even ruinous losses for others – and nowhere has this dichotomous paradigm been more apparent than in industries supported by copyright. People employed in the production of books, journalism, movies,... Read more
The typical Facebook or YouTube comment thread is often a swamp of hate speech, bullying, misinformation, and outright lies. Sometimes, it is obvious that whomever is writing these comments is clueless, or never even experienced the thing they’re commenting on – and may just be malicious. Comments should be a... Read more