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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

#41
post #11

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 dec…

"I am using AI agents to enjoy music while I sleep, so I don't have to". This guy is a visionary, the judges just don't get it.

He is economic growth incarnated.

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

#42
post #21

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 ma…

Yes this is the solution to this problem. This is what SoundCloud is doing AFAIK.

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

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What were the false or fradulent pretenses, representations, or promises?

A false representation of user interest

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

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He indisputably defrauded $8M from these companies by "tricking" them into giving it to him. Whereas with pirating by downloading a song, the "damage" is completely hypothetical, it's not like the downloader got actual money from doing the download and it's far from certain they would have paid the normal fee if the piracy option was not available. It's unproveable that the publisher actually lost any money from the…

Nah, that's insane. "You ticked our endolpoint KPI shit in a way we don't like" = actual crime? Gtfo

I guess forging documents and selling you a house which I don't own shouldn't be an actual crime either? The patterns of behavior in both cases are functionally indistinguishable.

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

#46

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

Do you think fraud should be legal if it's only targeting large entities like Spotify? Would that make the world a better place?

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

#48
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide an example of the former?

- AT&T “unlimited” mobile plans - Purdue Pharma's OxyContin push - Juul marketing vaping products as a "safer alternative" to smoking - Facebook's sale of user data to Cambridge Analytica - Wells Fargo opening fake accounts for people - ...

All of your examples are downright terrible, but perhaps that's to be expected with these sorts of arguments.

> AT&T “unlimited” mobile plans

https://www.att.com/plans/unlimited-data-plans/

There's a huge bolded disclaimer literally in the middle of the page which says "AT&T may temporarily slow data speeds if the network is busy."

> Purdue Pharma's OxyContin push

Forced to file for chapter 11

> Juul marketing vaping products as a "safer alternative" to smoking

It is strictly true that the vaping products sold by Juul are vastly safer than smoking.

> Facebook's sale of user data to Cambridge Analytica

Not fraud.

> Wells Fargo opening fake accounts for people

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/wells-fargo-agrees-p...

Huge penalties far exceeding their gains from this scheme conducted exclusively by low-level employees.

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