What do change over time "are the particular rituals and customs and expectations and rules pertaining to trust in society," she adds. "As those norms are shifting, as they did quite massively in the 19th century, you have the perfect conditions for exploiting the gaps between new and old. That shift to modernity was often the very script of the con."

Muzzey had hoped that the advancement of technology might make the process easier over time, that tools like ContentID could streamline things for artists. But he says it hasn’t. “I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that this isn’t a blip: this is the new normal, and it’s getting worse, not better,” he says. “Part of that problem is that people like me don’t realize their stuff is out there or think I’m not famous, so how can it be possible, not realizing that if you have a Soundcloud page, your music has been ripped, put into torrents, probably in a TV show in China somewhere, and that’s just how that world works. You don’t realize it until it’s revealed to you layer by layer.”