I tried to comment earlier but Partiko wasn't letting me for some reason. Since then I took a skim through the white paper for this since your post peaked my interest.

https://www.bittorrent.com/btt/btt-docs/BitTorrent_Token_Whitepaper.pdf

After looking through this briefly, I see that it is a way to incentivize people to leave files on their computers longer in order to seed to other users, creating files that will last longer and will be faster to download. I am guilty of deleting files when I'm done with them even though I know I should be sharing for a little while to allow the seed to spread. I initially thought they might be able to implement some sort of royalty payment to the author of each file, maybe they can, but it doesn't look like that's in their plan right now (or maybe I missed it).

I think the problem with this whole "pirate" thing was just created by a bunch of rich businessmen lobbying the government. They basically had a little temper-tantrum because they weren't making as much money as they could because someone found a way to share files on a large scale. Nobody cared back in the day when you made a mix-tape on a cassette for a friend. But because BitTorrent can do the same thing on a large scale, the greedy got mad. Since the early days of Napster, companies have adapted and are now charging for subscriptions to their files. This makes sense for larger organizations who can afford to pay, but really hurts the hobbyist who just wants to touch up photos on his spare time with something like Photoshop. But now, people are finding ways around that as well. Things are becoming more and more open-source and communities are building their own programs for everyone to use.

I'd imagine in another 10 years or something internet speeds will be so fast and hopefully, things can be so decentralized that everyone can have access to every song, video, or program for free while also earning some income for having the program on their computer to share to others with a percentage of that going to the author of each file. Calling BitTorrent "piracy" is just people trying to keep things how they were instead of moving towards change to empower everyone with these tools we now have. We just have to find a model that can benefit everyone and that can't happen keeping things how they were.