this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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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.

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[–] RangerJosie@lemmy.world 475 points 2 months ago (8 children)

So why arrested? This is what AI is for right? Oh, he screwed over the wrong people didn't he?

[–] TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 187 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Or screwed everyone over too little; if he had screwed everyone for ten billion he would be heralded as a genius.

[–] RangerJosie@lemmy.world 70 points 2 months ago

Would been on the cover of Forbes.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 163 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Stealing is only wrong if you steal from rich people. It's perfectly acceptable if the victims are poor. /s

[–] RangerJosie@lemmy.world 67 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Not /s sadly.

Just look at Bernie Madoff.

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[–] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 24 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Was anyone really stealing? The ads were served, right? The checks for the ads were paid.

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[–] finley@lemm.ee 47 points 2 months ago (1 children)

it's because his name isn't NVidia

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[–] protist@mander.xyz 29 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

He was arrested because he faked a ton of information related to his accounts to make it look like many people were doing it. I love that he gamed the system, but also it sounds like he totally committed financial fraud while doing so.

There are other people who have gamed the system without also committing fraud

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[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 302 points 2 months ago (12 children)

Fuck it. This scam was clever enough that I appreciate and sorta admire it.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 76 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

No.

Music play-farming has been a thing for probably almost a decade by now.

Spotify divides the huge amount of money they get from subscribers each month, evenly among all the plays during that month.

Someone figured out ages ago, that since spotify has a free tier, that means that if you can get some tracks on spotify as an artist, you can then create an army of free-tier bot accounts and massively inflate the share of the money you get paid as an "artist".

Of course, this comes at the cost of everyone elses legit plays becoming worth less. Its an absolutely disgusting scam and Spotify has been ignoring it happening for years.

Adding AI generation into the mix is barely an innovation.

Edit: And if you're wondering how it works with services that don't have a free tier, it is done by hijacking peoples real accounts, then having them stream the relevant tracks over and over. Either by stealing entire accounts, or infecting devices that are already logged in with malware that will open the relevant app/website and play the tracks over and over.

[–] Starbuncle@lemmy.ca 27 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The solution, to me, would seem to be to divide the revenue up on an individual basis instead. Does some sort of licensing issue prevent this? I'd think that the legitimate record labels would want to fix this loophole ASAP so that they can get more money.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 41 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

AFAIK YT Music does this. The money from your subscription gets divided amongst whatever you listened to.

That still wouldn't address the stolen account problem, but yes, it'd be a huge improvement.

I have no idea why Spotify still sticks to this massively exploitable model, except for the fact that it MASSIVELY inflates their stats for investors and advertisers.

[–] Starbuncle@lemmy.ca 23 points 2 months ago

exceot for the fact that it MASSIVELY inflates their stats for investors and advertisers.

Ah yes, the Reddit strategy.

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[–] AstralPath@lemmy.ca 23 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Y'know this guy seems intelligent enough to come up with this scheme, but not intelligent enough to keep a low profile. I honestly don't understand that.

Personally, I'd do the math to pay myself a living wage with this so that my actual work salary is nothing but a cherry on top; manage it so it seems like hype is ebbing and flowing in a natural way. If you ever figure out a way to break the system like this, you should never act in a way that draws attention to yourself.

[–] emax_gomax@lemmy.world 28 points 2 months ago

I imagine quite a few folks have done this. You don't hear about everyone that got away with it but you definitely hear about those that get caught.

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[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 140 points 2 months ago (16 children)

Not sure how this is a crime... breach of TOS, sure, but a crime?

What law is being broken here?

If his fake bands are being paid for bot clicks, that's a problem for the platforms to figure out. They need to examine their TOS.

[–] Tire@lemmy.ml 105 points 2 months ago (8 children)

Try to overthrow the US government? You can still be president. Break a companies arbitrary TOS? Police are at your door to take you away for a long time.

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[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 57 points 2 months ago

What law is being broken here?

He stepped onto the rich people's turf. We plebs are supposed to stay in our thatch huts beyond their line of sight.

Straight to jail.

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[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 130 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This is what Spotify was made for so I dont really see the issue. He made the music and the listeners, just look at that engagement you love so much!

[–] RangerJosie@lemmy.world 40 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Imagine something like a DDOS attack. But it's fans throwing AI listeners behind artists they love to boost them.

Imagine if fans shaped the music industry instead of the other way around?

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 53 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Now you're playing with power

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[–] JIMMERZ@lemm.ee 97 points 2 months ago (15 children)

He found a flaw in the system and exploited it. Although he didn’t do anything particularly wrong, the tools he used allowed him to do it. Yet, somehow he has to pay the consequences and the companies that made the tools to exploit the system are not liable. Got it.

[–] Ruxias@lemmy.world 31 points 2 months ago (6 children)

America's darling Jeff Bezos exploited a flaw in his book suppliers policies to gain an unfair edge on competitors in the early days of Amazon. Best business man ever: give him the key to the city and a dick-shaped rocket ship.

He also got rich daddy and rich friend money to get money for his totally original and non-derivative idea of "selling things online". Maybe that's where this guy went wrong? No rich daddy?

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[–] Underwaterbob@lemm.ee 83 points 2 months ago (14 children)

Wow. I'm a hobbyist musician. I have ~12 million listens across various streaming services and have made a whopping $45 in the two years since I finally released ~25 years worth of material. (Which is a lot of why it's my hobby and not a living.)

I can't imagine the numbers this guy had to pull off to make that much.

[–] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 42 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Send me a link and I can get you to ~12 million and 1 listens.

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[–] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 73 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How is this illegal? Sounds legit to me.

I use AI to answer ai generated emails at work all the time. I also use AI to design buildings that will never house people, but computer systems. It's all a shell game folks!!!

[–] Scolding7300@lemmy.world 33 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Probably the bots listening part. The point for the royalties is to get people to use the software and pay for it

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[–] bappity@lemmy.world 70 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

oh look they care about it now it's affecting them

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 68 points 2 months ago (9 children)

Honestly, what did he do wrong? He made crappy cheap music and listened to it using AI and bots. listening to it must have cost him subscription money, so I guess he just listened enough to get the songs popular enough so that other would listen, and they did and everyone made money.

Yeah, it's all cheap shit but it's wrong when he does it but totally fine when so many other media companies do it?

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[–] shani66@ani.social 59 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (9 children)

Lawsuit, sure, but is it actually illegal?

[–] FahrenheitGhost@lemmy.world 58 points 2 months ago (5 children)

People who are not part of the wealthy elite stealing profits is illegal. Doesn't matter what the method was.

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[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 55 points 2 months ago

i mean this is the system we got set up isnt it?

[–] figaro@lemdro.id 55 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Can you imagine how exciting it would be though when this actually started to work? This probably started as a side project, with a dude saying like, nahhh this could never work.

Until suddenly it did

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[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 51 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The butlerian jihad is missing the point here.

The fraud is using bots (not AI just plain python with selenium or something like that. Sorry) for making fake listeners.

AI here is just some coat to hide the fraud a little better, but nothing more.

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[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 50 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Maybe a stupid question but.... what exactly was illegal about this? I'm sure there were ToS or EULAs violated, but what law is he being charged on?

[–] hayes_@sh.itjust.works 38 points 2 months ago (2 children)

3rd sentence of the article:

Indicted on three counts involving money laundering and wire fraud, the Charlotte-area man faces a maximum of 20 years per charge.

If you follow the article to the press release:

SMITH, 52, of Cornelius, North Carolina, is charged with wire fraud conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; and money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Those are the charges yes, but how is this any different than what all sorts of corporations do

[–] aphonefriend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 36 points 2 months ago

The difference is he was a poor trying to pull himself up. Corporations are glorious entities that can do no wrong in American law.

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[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 37 points 2 months ago (3 children)
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[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 36 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Maybe he broke terms of service with the streaming companies but they should be pursuing him in civil courts. This feels like abuse of the criminal justice system to retrieve money for companies that were negligent in how they were running their streaming businesses.

This guy produced music and he alsp streamed the music even if it was bots at industrial scale. He seemingly met the criteria needed to get money from the streamers. I'm not a lawyer at all but on cursory look at the definition and elements of wire fraud, I guessing this will hinge on whether this was a "material deception" - but he produced actual music and he streamed it, so is it?

Also i wonder whether it can be proven that the intent was to "defraud" rather than take advantage / game a system.

It feels like the tax payer is bearing the cost of prosecuting someone for a dispute between a person and the multi billion dollar music industry.

Also the music industry trying to paint this as theft of money from other artists is a bullshit - the streaming fees are supposedly divided out proportionately from overall streaming. He caused more streaming so the pot was bigger, and he took a proportionate share of that bigger pot. And any disproportionate sharing reflects the shitty practice's of the streamers and the big music rights holders who are essentially monopolies squeezing out the smaller competitors from the system.

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 34 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

If your business model allows somebody to game you like that, you kind of deserve it tbh.

It shouldn't be based on plays. It should be based on money made from a customer and divided between what they listened to/watched. But then you wouldn't make as much money from the people that forget to use their subscriptions, which is probably a huge chunk of their revenue.

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bro found a glitch in the system

[–] smokin_shinobi@lemmy.world 26 points 2 months ago (7 children)

How is it illegal? And how much did it cost him to make it work I wonder.

[–] Vent@lemm.ee 51 points 2 months ago

The headline focuses on the wrong thing. Making a bunch of crappy songs and uploading the to Spotify and other streaming services is perfectly legal, AI or not.

The illegal part is that he created lots and lots of fake accounts that constantly streamed his songs and masked them to look like authentic listens. So much so that he was making $110k per month. That is straight-up fraud, which is what he was arrested for.

It has nothing to do with AI, but that makes more people click on the article.

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[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 26 points 2 months ago

Its subtle, but the tone of that article's coverage actually sucks... Is futurism a piece of shit?

What a waste of my tax dollars by the DOJ to try to recover spotify´s money for a broken system that they left open and are honestly probably exploiting themselves in parallel to inflate engagement numbers and take streams away from legit artists that they have to play. Remember, they want you in their app, they don't give a shit about actual music. If you'll just listen to random boops, they save cost in the middle. Not where I want the justice systems effort to go.

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