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Man pleads guilty to $8M AI-generated music scheme

therecord.media

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Re: Man pleads guilty to $8M AI-generated music scheme

#3

Post by QuantumNomad_ »

> 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.

Re: Man pleads guilty to $8M AI-generated music scheme

#4

Post by helsinkiandrew »

The Indictment has an interesting section on the detail of how he did it (end of page 5): https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/media/1366241/dl

> 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.

Re: Man pleads guilty to $8M AI-generated music scheme

#6

Post by bob1029 »

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.

Re: Man pleads guilty to $8M AI-generated music scheme

#7

Post by lemontheme »

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

Re: Man pleads guilty to $8M AI-generated music scheme

#8

Post by eddiewithzato »

lemontheme wrote: post #7

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

yes it’s fraud since you get money per listens

Re: Man pleads guilty to $8M AI-generated music scheme

#9

Post by burnt-resistor »

QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #3

> 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…

Maybe a "fake" email address in their terms is an impossibly invalid one, unowned one that cannot be verified, or a disposable verifiable one? I'm not sure.

Fun fact: Gmail address prefixes can optionally intercalate a period between any letters. All accounts though must be remain unique after normalizing case and removing all periods.

a.bc@ = ab.c@ = a.b.c@ = abc@, but only one of these can be registered.

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