All these talks about piracy.. As someone who works in media & broadcast lemme tell you it’s a neverending war. I’ll show you how many emails were exchanged just in a few months on the issue if piracy. These aren’t even all of it.

With big ticket items like the FIFA World Cup, it’s even crazier. We as media rights holder (broadcasters) spent tens of millions of dollars only to face thousands of illegal streaming every single day. I had a team of 6 people monitoring in shifts for 24/7.

Thing is with “live” content you have very little time to find, report and take down. FIFA has a tool but it doesn’t cover all (content recognition etc). I reckon Marvel has also employed such content recognition tool for their movies.

Question is, why isn’t Marvel / huge comic or book publishers use a similar tool to do semi auto takedowns? Perhaos because it’s a static image it’s a lot harder to recognize? I’m no tech person so I don’t know. YouTube has it too and it has helped us.

In sports big leagues / events use content protection services like Athletia. A similar service / tech *should* be available for comics / books. You can shout until you cry blood but truth is piracy won’t go away because people love free things. Most people will avoid paying.

You gotta limit and cut at the source, which is the pirates and pirated content itself. And that responsibility lays with the publishers / IP Rights holderz. Consumers who purchase legally should demand publishers to do more to prevent piracy and protect their writers/artists.

LCs and Online comics sellers and distributors should demand publishers to do more because lack of action in squashing piracy is hurting their businesses. We bombarded FIFA many, many times a day with piracy links and evidences and sent letters from our sublicensee.

You have to make it impossible for the Rights Owner to ignore you. Make demands, strike, do what’s necessary to protect the value of the product. It’s inconvenient and annoying and time consuming but unfortunately, again, shouting at people not to pirate won’t change a thing.

Just to add: the responsibility of the publishers doesn’t stop here. The entire industry needs to hurry up and follow tech. The UI and UX of Marvel Unlimited is HORRIBLE and don’t even start with Comixology. The fact you have to go to their website to buy is.. ugh.

Comics app should:
- Make back issues available faster
- Give users discount when subscribing
- Digital comics added automatically when you subscribe to prints via official app
- Give users rewards for completing events / series / subs
- Provide easy “collecting” & bookmarks

Basically the app needs to give user a smooth and enriching user experience, like they have their own library of comics. See Kindle / Spotify / Netflix. Similar principles can and should be applied to comics. I don’t understand what is so hard in doing this with the $ marvel has.

Until there is a change in how comics is distributed and sold, piracy will remain rampant and there is *nothing*, absolutely nothing you can do as a creator or a fan that will diminish piracy in a meaningful way. You can name them, shame them, fight them, they don’t care.