“Of course I made MP3 copies”: Wu-Tang Clan album owner is sued for illegal distribution

There has been another twist in the saga of the unique Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon A Time In Shaolin.

This time its initial owner, disgraced drug firm executive Martin Shkreli, is being sued for illegally copying the album in strict violation of his purchase agreement.

The New York Post has reported that the album’s current owner, cryptocurrency group Pleasr DAO, is taking the action after Shkreli reportedly livestreamed a copy of the album over the weekend on X (formerly Twitter).

It’s not the first time Shkreli has done this. He allegedly hosted an online listening party one month after his release from prison in 2022 and appeared to be quite brazen about this, boasting about it in several posts on social media.

The lawsuit also alleges that he has openly admitted to making the copies on another stream, purportedly stating: “Of course I made MP3 copies, they’re like hidden in safes all around the world. I’m not stupid. I don’t buy something for two million dollars just so I can keep one copy.”

PleasrDAO want Shkreli to destroy any copies, turn over any profits he’s made from distributing it and pay compensatory and punitive damages.

After the lawsuit was filed, Shkreli lambasted PleasrDAO on social media. “PleasrDAO never voted or discussed this litigation with members,” he posted on Twitter/X “You will easily lose this legal retardation. The pleasr members don’t support this gayness. See you in court!”

Lovely.

It comes in the week that the album is about to be heard – legally - in public for the first time in nearly a decade. PleasrDAO are ‘exhibiting’ the album for ten days from this Saturday at the Tasmania Museum of Old And New Art (MONA) in Australia.

The museum is hosting a number of listening parties as part of its Namedropping exhibition, which examines status and notoriety.

The original idea behind the album was it was an attempt to restore value to recorded music by creating an album as a one-off artefact. Clad in a silver jewel-encrusted case with a Wu Tang seal, the single copy of Once Upon A Time In Shaolin was bought by Shkreli in 2015.

When the trader was convicted for securities fraud three years later, the album was bought for $4 million by PleasrDAO, a group that claims to honour ‘anti-establishment rebels’ through their purchase of NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

PleasrDAO have since made various noises about making the album more widely heard – in 2021 their spokesperson Jamie Johnso told Rolling Stone: “We want this to be us bringing this back to the people. We want fans to participate in this album at some level.”