The songs that the AI CEO provided to Smith originally had file names full of randomized numbers and letters such as “n_7a2b2d74-1621-4385-895d-b1e4af78d860.mp3,” the DOJ noted in its detailed press release.
When uploading them to streaming platforms, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music, the man would then change the songs’ names to words like “Zygotes,” “Zygotic,” and “Zyme Bedewing,” whatever that is.
The artist naming convention also followed a somewhat similar pattern, with names ranging from the normal-sounding “Calvin Mann” to head-scratchers like “Calorie Event,” “Calms Scorching,” and “Calypso Xored.”
To manufacture streams for these fake songs, Smith allegedly used bots that stream the songs billions of times without any real person listening. As with similar schemes, the bots’ meaningless streams were ultimately converted to royalty paychecks for the people behind them.
Yeah, it’s an exploit but it doesn’t seem illegal. It seems like the issue is with whatever service. They need to fix their contract or their software. Maybe it is in the contract or EULA that you can’t do this sort of thing already though, in which case it’s fair game.
Then that would be a civil matter and he wouldn’t have been arrested for it.
I mean, being arrested doesn’t mean a crime was committed. It means he’s accused of a crime. I’ll be interested to see if there is actually a conviction in the end.
Exactly, I don’t think there was anything illegal here. At best it’s breach of contract with Spotify or whoever, and they could get sued. MAYBE there’s some interpretation of fraud that could apply? But it’s not like he sold anything and misrepresented it.