With online storefronts dominating the mobile market, it’s safe to assume that most people who own digital devices have some experience with the concept of micropayments. But now that we’ve grown accustomed to the idea of shelling out tiny nuggets of tribute for things like apps, games and music, are we willing to do the same for art?

Art Micro Patronage is hoping for the best. The website, an online gallery experimenting with new methods of monetizing artwork that uses the internet as a medium, recently launched C.R.E.A.M., its last in a series of online exhibitions of animated GIFs, web pages and other net-based artwork that asks visitors to contribute small amounts to individual works. In doing so, patrons are granted access to them after the exhibition “ends” and the works are removed from public viewing.

0-Day Art, a warez release group for internet art, has other ideas. On the day of the exhibit’s premiere, the group released a torrent enabling all of the featured works, including all those from previous Art Micro Patronage exhibits, to be downloaded for free. It wasn’t the first time: the torrented exhibits were part of the group’s ongoing efforts to “put net art back on the net,” a mission that mixes old-school software pirate sensibilities with an underlying drive to preserve digital works for the general public, even if that means wresting control of those works from the artists themselves.