This conviction has nothing to do with uploading AI generated music. The illegal part was using tens-of-thousands of bot accounts to listen to them (and the ads) generating fraudulent revenue for himself.
This is just the same old view botting (aka click fraud) that has been going on for decades. The AI generated music aspect is irrelevant.
Click fraud is cut and dry wire fraud: Using electronic communications to deceptively steal money or property.
> Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice
Not it’s not. Creating fake accounts and instructing them to listen to music does not generate any money. The actual money generation, the actual fraud, was carried out on his behalf when the platform claimed the listens were real and charged the advertisers for it.
Under the letter of the law, this is just a TOS violation.
> This conviction has nothing to do with uploading AI generated music
He probably estimated the company would have noticed quickly if the fake listens were concentrated into a handful of real tracks. So machine generated audio was necessary to achieve the scale without detection.
Right and it going on for years and based on his blatant communications, there was a minimal fraud control - deliberate indifference in my opinion - to the harm caused by the services exploited.
You don’t have a stake in this game, I do.
Indie rights holders like me only get a slice of the revenues after Spotify pays like 75% to the RIAA firms. He gutted our pool. I’ll never see any of the pennies I’m rightfully owed even with great info from DistroKid.
I’ve come around. Copyright is dead, effectively. Just in time too. I WAS planning to sue Smart Communications for engaging in wholesale copyright infringement at scale, as they have unauthorized copies of poetry I wrote in jail - I have proof and trapped an asshole ex cop working for them into admitting they did what I suspected - but I’m moving on with life, still wounded, still sore.
Oh well, much bigger things are coming my way than worrying about money. Little people stand on piles of money to look big. They will never be able to look me eye to eye, as I’m a giraffe by comparison.
This kind of fraud would be impossible if revenue from each subscriber is distributed just to the artists they listened to. Bots listening to thousands of songs would not make a difference in this model. And I would be much happier if my money went to struggling artists I like and support, rather than to the global top 10, of whom I never played a single song.
I don't have data, but my gut feeling is that it would make a significant difference to niche artists with small but loyal listeners.
I'm not a fan of anything that happened here, but at the same time I have some concerns about the ability of large corporations to convert TOS violations into federal crimes. Streaming media vendors seem to get all kinds of special attention when it comes time to prosecute other humans.
> At certain points, SMITH had as many as 10,000 active Bot Accounts on
the Streaming Platforms
> Later, SMITH attempted to sell his fraudulent streaming scheme as a service, in which other musicians would pay him for streams he would fraudulently generate or share royalties with him in exchange for fraudulent streams of their
music
> In or about 2018, SMITH began working with the Chief Executive Officer of an AI music company ("CC-3") and a music promoter ("CC-4") to create hundreds of thousands of songs using artificial intelligence that SMITH could then fraudulently stream.
If I have three email addresses petethecoolone@gmail.com, joemama69@gmail.com, and michael.j.smith@gmail.com, are those “fake” as well, then? An email address doesn’t have to reflect your real name.
How about when I use iCloud Hide My Email to generate a unique email address when I create a new account somewhere? Is that a “fake” email address as well?
Or do they mean hacked email accounts that belonged to someone else? But then calling them “fake” email addresses still seems weird wording.
Flooding stream services with slop and autoplaying it through a bot farm is obviously bad behavior, but is it illegal, punishable with jail time (5 years mentioned)?
I see no victims other than large streaming services who failed to account for a changing reality.
I’m getting ‘because of torrenting metallica won’t be able to afford its third private jet’ vibes from this
69 comments
This is just the same old view botting (aka click fraud) that has been going on for decades. The AI generated music aspect is irrelevant.
Click fraud is cut and dry wire fraud: Using electronic communications to deceptively steal money or property.
This guy is a visionary, the judges just don't get it.
All this guy did was break TOS, and find a broken business model. No fraud. Should have found a lawyer.
> Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice
It’s wire fraud
Under the letter of the law, this is just a TOS violation.
> This conviction has nothing to do with uploading AI generated music
He probably estimated the company would have noticed quickly if the fake listens were concentrated into a handful of real tracks. So machine generated audio was necessary to achieve the scale without detection.
You don’t have a stake in this game, I do.
Indie rights holders like me only get a slice of the revenues after Spotify pays like 75% to the RIAA firms. He gutted our pool. I’ll never see any of the pennies I’m rightfully owed even with great info from DistroKid.
I’ve come around. Copyright is dead, effectively. Just in time too. I WAS planning to sue Smart Communications for engaging in wholesale copyright infringement at scale, as they have unauthorized copies of poetry I wrote in jail - I have proof and trapped an asshole ex cop working for them into admitting they did what I suspected - but I’m moving on with life, still wounded, still sore.
Oh well, much bigger things are coming my way than worrying about money. Little people stand on piles of money to look big. They will never be able to look me eye to eye, as I’m a giraffe by comparison.
Facts.
I don't have data, but my gut feeling is that it would make a significant difference to niche artists with small but loyal listeners.
> At certain points, SMITH had as many as 10,000 active Bot Accounts on the Streaming Platforms
> Later, SMITH attempted to sell his fraudulent streaming scheme as a service, in which other musicians would pay him for streams he would fraudulently generate or share royalties with him in exchange for fraudulent streams of their music
> In or about 2018, SMITH began working with the Chief Executive Officer of an AI music company ("CC-3") and a music promoter ("CC-4") to create hundreds of thousands of songs using artificial intelligence that SMITH could then fraudulently stream.
> using fake email addresses
What exactly is a “fake” email address here?
If I have three email addresses petethecoolone@gmail.com, joemama69@gmail.com, and michael.j.smith@gmail.com, are those “fake” as well, then? An email address doesn’t have to reflect your real name.
How about when I use iCloud Hide My Email to generate a unique email address when I create a new account somewhere? Is that a “fake” email address as well?
Or do they mean hacked email accounts that belonged to someone else? But then calling them “fake” email addresses still seems weird wording.
Big players defraud the common people -> no prosecution
Common man defrauds the big players -> prosecution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo
I see no victims other than large streaming services who failed to account for a changing reality.
I’m getting ‘because of torrenting metallica won’t be able to afford its third private jet’ vibes from this
> The streaming service Deezer said earlier this year it is receiving more than 60,000 fully AI-generated tracks daily…
Wow!