Original Source: Old Yuppie

When you were pirating Outkast in 2003, could you imagine a world where you could get royalties for owning an MP3 copy? As the NFT and web3 debate reaches fever pitch, hip-hop legend and innovator Nas is selling two of his singles as NFTs that fans can buy to claim streaming royalty rights. The popularity of music NFTs brings up a particularly interesting debate: does blockchain work against the free and open virtues of torrenting? Or is it fighting gatekeeper censorship that content pirates aim to overturn?

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artists and fans

The most divisive period in the history of digital entertainment was the Napster era and the mass adoption of BitTorrent in the 2000s. The era transformed the music and film industries, pitting artists against fans. The period ended with a dramatic increase in intellectual property enforcement, accompanied by a massive improvement in consumer choice of digital goods (think Spotify, Netflix, Apple Music, etc.)."The rise of Web3 has once again brought attention to concepts such as digital ownership, intellectual property management, and creators' rights. Critics of Web 3 often draw negative comparisons to the ethos surrounding torrenting. Their argument is that torrenting embodies"Radical Opposition to Intellectual Property

, and created an Internet with more open, free and accessible content, while the blockchain is the opposite.

This misses several important points. First, while some are simply doing it to save some cash, many are doing it because it is so convenient for official payment sources, the torrent movement is best understood as a consumer pushback against outdated business models fueled by rapid technological change. In this respect, web3 is definitely the spiritual successor of that era.

"Another problem with this buzz is that it forgets about the actual debates of the period. Philosophical pirates at the time would point to artists being harmed by intermediaries as justification for piracy."Artists aren't hurt because all their money is touring", which was an obvious rallying point at the time, and big publishers were often portrayed as villains. In fact, torrenting's impact on record sales is likely to hurt publishers' and artists' bottom lines. To describe the torrenting movement as Web 1.0 supporters’ opposition to the rise of Web 2.0 is a kind of"colored glasses

The practice ignores the human cost of content piracy.

In addition, many musicians who asserted their rights and seemed to side with publishers were also dragged through the mud, which is not a good image for the movement's moral high ground.

However, Web3 provides creators and fans with better tools such as enforceable scarcity, transparency, fundamental ownership and clear provenance. It’s easier than ever for artists to directly own their content and maintain access to their community. So while web3 pays homage to torrenting in a way, it actually provides the infrastructure for a more meaningful and economically empowering model for artists and their fans.

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overthrow the gatekeeper

Torrenting is similar to blockchain in that they are peer-to-peer decentralized technologies. With the rise of NFTs, blockchains are also becoming a more common method of content distribution -- another BitTorrent hallmark. One of the key differences between these technologies is the attitude of their users towards intellectual property."In the age of torrenting and web3, creating is hard, fun, and rewarding and celebrated. Intellectual property is one way to ensure that these creative acts keep happening. In the early IP regime, creators' value seemed overwhelmingly captured by gatekeepers, rent-seekers, and intermediaries. What this framework ignores is that these intermediaries only address"Discover

a means of problem.

The creative act of being locked in an empty room doesn't help an artist pay the rent. So, there's the rise of publishers, labels, managers, brokers and everyone else. Like it or not, this group has been incredibly successful for a very long time, given the specifics of technology and means of distribution. Also, the discovery problem by no means disappeared as a major problem

Yet what sparks such bitter conflict in the age of torrenting is the perception that such discovery devices have grown in power and value far beyond the creative talent they should support, especially in an era of rapid technological change.

A major goal of web3 is to fundamentally remove gatekeeper status. One of the problems with web3 is that they think gatekeepers are everywhere, with these transparent and decentralized tools that make it clear that your hard-earned money is going directly to the creator or project you want to support."Open ledgers, smart contracts, and white papers stand in stark contrast to the airtight, confidential contracts that creators were forced to sign in the old world. People want to see new mechanisms to protect creators, as intellectual property rights have done in the past, we can now rest assured that the benefit is the creators themselves. In the words of one artist, the technique allows"More Creators, More Music, and More Human Experience". Boil this problem down to", completely ignoring the significance of these two movements.

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fight for your rights

NFTs won't completely replace albums or physical art. They will create new experiences for fans and will have a major impact on licensing and creators' ability to earn a living.

I've spent over four years building Twitch's music offerings and a fair amount of time working in the DMCA mines, so I'm intimately familiar with the headaches that come with digital intellectual property enforcement in the US.

NFTs are a more clear, transparent, operable and efficient way of doing business. All ownership details are written in simple computer understandable terms, not buried in legalese. Additionally, the simplicity of these contracts will encourage greater use of licenses -- just as the shift to easily consumable MP3s was the start of the music streaming industry. It turns out that if you make a product that makes it easy for people to do the right thing, people will want to do the right thing.

This means that NFTs can lower the barriers to collaboration and create opportunities for fans to become creators themselves. I like the idea that owning an album also gives fans the right to remix/sample it, stream it, play it in bars, or include it on the soundtrack of a movie or podcast.

Even contracted and represented artists will have the opportunity to participate, perhaps releasing NFTs of art and collectibles based on their likeness or the art they create. I'd love to see creators using NFTs as merit badges or passes into concerts or other live events. Many musicians have found that using these new tools successfully transforms their fan clubs, taking outright ownership and the opportunity to build a community together.

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Collaboration, not litigation

Blockchain technology provides an immediate way for artists to build a community with their fans, allowing them to identify fans, gift or sell things to fans without intermediaries, and form communities with shared artwork and signals.

Together, these tools offer more community-building power than was available to artists 20 years ago, without the intermediaries that used to control consumers.