WarpShare
Founded 2006
About WarpShare
WarpShare worked to bridge the gap between digital piracy and the economic models of RIAA and MPAA industry groups. Aimed to support musical artists and copyright holders by exploring innovative ways to derive value from piracy. Recognized that piracy could not be entirely eliminated and analyzed the shortcomings of traditional anti-piracy efforts by the MPAA and RIAA. Some things which happened later that either proved our premises true or false: * Developed CleerPeer, an efficient peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol, which improved upon the performance and efficiency of existing protocols like BitTorrent. Addressed and solved multiple performance and efficiency issues present in the original BitTorrent protocol. (U.S. Patent filing US8103870B2 “Hive-based Peer-to-Peer Network”.) * Contributed to early concepts in peer-to-peer (P2P) digital content delivery with CleerPeer (c. 2007). These ideas have since been realized in technologies like IPFS, which empowers P2P-based distribution of digital content. * Researched machine learning-powered content identification methods (c. 2007), which have since been successfully adopted by companies such as YouTube. * Designed a social network focused around digital media, incorporating gamification elements to enhance tagging and content improvement over automated data sources. Recognized that users enjoy keeping track of music, movies, and TV shows, discovering similar content, and sharing with friends. Drew inspiration from platforms like GetGlue (acquired by Yahoo), Letterboxd, IMDb, Trakt.tv, and Plex to create an engaging and interactive user experience. * Pioneered an innovative business model (c. 2008) enabling users and brands to support and sponsor content through interactive advertising integrated into the media experience (e.g., content-targeted advertising, a smarter version of sponsorships). * Designed ads to be part of the content, avoiding interruptions common with pre-roll and mid-roll ads used by platforms like YouTube at the time. (Apple pursued similar advertising concepts with their iAd service (2010), aiming to transform advertising into an experiential medium.) * Brands sponsored downloads by paying 99¢ per song, held in escrow for the benefit of copyright owners (or donated to charity) in exchange for social engagement, offering an ethical approach to digital content monetization via “piracy”. (For end-users, it is similar to sponsorships of today.) * Readability (c. 2009) implemented a similar business model for written content (e.g., blogs), but kept any unclaimed funds. Public backlash led to them shutting down in 2016.
Company Facts
- Founded: 2006
- Legal name: WarpShare, Inc.
- Operating status: Closed
- IPO status: Private
- Employees: 1 – 10
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