Positive-sum piracy
Back in October 2023, I published Original Pirate Material: A Manifesto for Positive-Sum Piracy onchain, and since then, I've been pondering how I could revise the narrative of digital piracy, "from one of roguery to one of radical inclusion and mutual benefit.”
Today, I'm introducing Pirate, an experiment in positive-sum piracy, and consumer crypto app, built on Zora rewards.
Why choose piracy?
Contrary to popular belief, musicians were actually better off when Napster was a thing. Pirated distribution often led to more record sales, more dates when touring and more fans buying merch. For both the artist and the fan, it cut out the middle man.
In a video titled Why Spotify Will Ultimately Fail by a renowned musician, YouTuber and data scientist, Benn Jordan described the above pay-per-stream chart as a "bait and switch, especially when Spotify subscriber growth looks like this."
Streaming services clearly put consumers first and their suppliers last. Yet according to Parks Associates research, piracy will cost streaming services $113 Billion in losses by 2027. Whether it’s torrenting or password sharing:
- all information wants to be free, and
- artists still need to get fucking paid.
And no, this ain’t a dichotomy. Free as in freedom. What I’m proposing is a vampire attack on the incumbents, to bring artists onchain, the same way Napster brought them online. As the late Steve Jobs once said, "better to be a pirate than join the navy.”
Why back a pirate?
Pirates ship. Pirate will set sail soon, in the aggressively simple form factor of "one-click piracy." Pirated copies of anything. Deployed by anyone. Collected by everyone. Rewards claimable by the original creators only. Paid out in ether.
Imagine you're first to pirate a track. The artist sees $X in mint proceeds, verifies media ownership, and the associated token metadata updates to reflect that. Depending on who they are, how do you think the secondary market reacts?
Powered by Zora rewards, not only does the artist withdraw $X, they also get trading fees from the Uniswap pool, forever. As for the Pirates, one of them earned a % of mint proceeds, while others earned a % for mint referrals.
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