Yahoo Finance Digital art collective MSCHF sells ‘fashion statement’ Pirate Bay and Megaupload email addresses
Email addresses featuring the domains of famous piracy sites have sold for thousands of dollars online.
It is the latest art project from Brooklyn-based collective MSCHF (pronounced mischief), who gained notoriety last month for selling limited edition “Satan Shoes” that contain a drop of human blood.
MSCHF was forced to recall the sold-out $1,018 (£739) shoes, which it created in partnership with the rapper Lil Nas X, after Nike filed a lawsuit against them.
The latest stunt involved selling “exclusive” email addresses purportedly attached to sites like The Pirate Bay and Megaupload.
The addresses, which sold out within a day of launching on Monday, were sent to buyers on a CD with a commemorative card and stickers.
“Your email address is a fashion statement. Your fashion statement is who you are,” promotional material for the Email Capsule Collection project stated.
“Your email address is who you are seen to be, is who you are. It’s a shame that for the majority of the population, our identity options boil down to either ‘gmail user’ or ‘douchebag who pays for a disruptive inbox’. How can we (further) democratise the identity economy?”
The email addresses cost $250 each, despite not actually being linked to the original piracy sites. Box sets of up to 50 4Chan, Heaven’s Gate and Angelfire addresses sold for $1,200.
Other projects launched by MSCHF include stock advice based on people’s horoscopes, and a remote-controlled robot dog fitted with a paintball gun that was set loose inside a mock art gallery.
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