Alex Barker

Throughout all of this, Curtis was the one in the firing line.

Mr. X and the other owners, they preferred a different approach.

Hiding.

If there was a year zero for the industry, this was probably it.

Not 2006, when a bunch of renegade tech guys like Curtis started platforms where you could share stolen videos.

They were just the folks storming the Bastille.

What really mattered...

was what came a few years later, when someone emerged from all the chaos to seize control.

When Curtis took that call, he had no clue he'd witnessed the moment that started to happen.

Before long, the new owner of XTube showed up in his office, a German software engineer called Fabian Tillmann.

How would you break down the negative consequences that the arrival of tube sites like Pornhub and YouPorn had?

So there was a personal toll from giving away stolen porn too.

How could tube sites get away with not policing what was uploaded?

The answer is pretty ugly.

We'll get into how in a later chapter.

All you need to know for now is that tube sites prospered using the same legal loophole as social media platforms.

For the most part, they're not responsible for what gets uploaded to their sites.

They just have to deal with the complaints.

Over the course of your career, we've seen a lot of the owners of these sites really recede into the background.

They do a lot to hide their identity.