From the comfort of coffee shops in Eastern Europe, one web-savvy woman earns her paycheck protecting pornographers from copyright infringement.
For Sylvia Nikolova, browsing for porn is a 9-to-5 thing. Day in and day out, she scans tube sites, torrents and blogs, searching for adult content that’s been posted without the permission of its creators. When she finds this unlicensed material, she flags it and monitors the host sites until the pirated files are removed.
Her employer is the U.S.-based Porn Guardian, which porn studios and distributors like Vivid and Hustler hire to bring pirates “to their knees” — according to their tagline. Nikolova is their foot soldier, taking down porn pirates from the comfort of coffee shops around her hometown of Sofia, Bulgaria. At a glance, Nikolova looks like just another freelancer, that is, until you peek over her shoulder at the porn scenes streaming across her screen…
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This story is republished from MEL Magazine. MEL aims to challenge, inspire and encourage readers to drop any preconceived notions of who they’re supposed to be. Because in life only really starts once you’ve given up trying to be someone you’re not.
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