6 ms·

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

54 points by nstj 6mo ago

Mistletoe 6mo ago
I’m seeing the future and it’s some sort of AI gray goo all over everything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo
- hsbauauvhabzb 6mo ago
  Soooo basically the internet as of today?
- ithkuil 6mo ago
  Explains the Fermi paradox
QuantumNomad_ 6mo ago
> 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.
- burnt-resistor 6mo ago
  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.
  - phil21 6mo ago
    That is all email addresses, it’s part of the spec. Aside from broken implementations of course. Periods are optional. Edit: Woops yeah, meant pluses. Dots are somewhat common as optional these days but not universal.
    - basilikum 6mo ago
      Are you sure you mean dots and not pluses?
    - rahkiin 6mo ago
      False, this is only with Gmail. And not even true for Gmail workspaces.
    - fc417fc802 6mo ago
      He's talking about aliases, not independent email addresses.
    - burnt-resistor 6mo ago
      Which "spec"? Many specifications exist and not every MTA, mailbox, nor email client understands the latest and every implementation is guaranteed to have quirks, but here are the most common: RFCs 822, 2822, 4952, 5336, 6530. There is no the spec. Subaddressing isn't standardized, but there was a half-hearted RFC on that with too many extra features. How email user parts are interpreted is up to the MTA, mailbox, or email client. Plus subaddressing informally as a hack has existed since at least 2005 according to my rusty memory. It's, therefore, a de facto standard. Use it where possible to track down leaks of personal information, but it's likely to bite with some gotchas. I used to maintain a @{{name}}.name domain and email server where all emails went to a single catchall account without setup or subaddressing needed to disambiguate which source email correspondence was from. > Dots are somewhat common as optional these days but not universal. This handwaving tautology is meaningless.
- applfanboysbgon 6mo ago
  A "fake" e-mail address is one that is not clearly tied to your real identity, citizen. There is no reason to use such non-identifying addresses unless you have something to hide. Comply, for the children.
- vunderba 6mo ago
  Could the article be referring to subaddressing? e.g. yourname+amazon@gmail.com yourname+etsy@gmail.com yourname+itunes@gmail.com I still don't really think this counts as fake emails, since it has legitimate use cases, but I suppose if their backend couldn't tell the difference and a single person used sub-addressing to sign up multiple times that you could argue that these are fake-ish.
helsinkiandrew 6mo ago
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 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.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
bob1029 6mo ago
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.
- jonathanlydall 6mo ago
  He essentially defrauded $8M from media streaming companies, if the ToS violation is the easiest path for the companies to have him quite rightfully convicted of what is indisputably criminal behaviour then I have zero qualms about that. Does this behaviour open the door for ToS being abused? I have no legal expertise, but I would expect in cases like this that everyone would rationally come to the conclusion that the defendant's behaviour was wrong and unethical and the ToS just made it easy for the plaintiffs to point out to the court that they do in fact explicitly forbid such activities, making it an open and shut case. From headlines I've seen of around ToS enforcement over the decades, courts don't seem to just view them the same as a physically signed legal agreement and will not enforce outrageous clauses in them.
  - phire 6mo ago
    The steaming services won't have lost any money on this. It's the advertisers who paid for ads to get played to the bot accounts, and (depending on how the advertising deals were structured) other artists with legitimate listeners might have received smaller revenue cuts.
    - jongjong 6mo ago
      Exactly and most of the advertisers are attention monopolies anyways and only using ads to reinforce their monopolies.
  - twothreeone 6mo ago
    > rightfully convicted of what is indisputably criminal behaviour Consider the opposite view: if pretending to be a human is "criminal behavior" there are about 8 billion criminals walking around on this planet.. and in this case our current legal system appears to be hijacked for the protection of utterly nonsensical, hopelessly broken, ancient business models from a rent-seeking, anti-consumer, creator-exploiting, trillion-dollar corporate mafia, which would like nothing better than to track, spy, and force-feed their audience at every turn.
lemontheme 6mo ago
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
- eddiewithzato 6mo ago
  yes it’s fraud since you get money per listens
  - prmoustache 6mo ago
    I see it as using the system provided the way it is meant to be used.
    - JasonADrury 6mo ago
      https://artists.spotify.com/artificial-streaming https://artists.spotify.com/artificial-streaming Spotify clearly communicates that this is not allowed.
      - prmoustache 6mo ago
        Yeah it is like putting a huge red button in the middle of an otherwise empty room with a small "don't press the button" sign on the wall behind you when you enter the room.
        JasonADrury 6mo ago
        Right, yes, because the people doing this totally don't know that they're breaking the law?
        prmoustache 6mo ago
huijzer 6mo ago
So let me get this straight, Big players defraud the common people -> no prosecution Common man defrauds the big players -> prosecution
- p0w3n3d 6mo ago
  Could you provide an example of the former?
  - pjc50 6mo ago
    The big example is probably AI training not being counted as piracy.
    - JasonADrury 6mo ago
      How is that an example of the big players defrauding the common people?
  - twothreeone 6mo ago
    - 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 - ...
    - JasonADrury 6mo ago
      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/ 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-pay-3-billion-resolve-criminal-and-civil-investigations-sales-practices 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.
phire 6mo ago
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.
- gmerc 6mo ago
  Should have used OpenClaw and they’d given him investment instead
  - Imustaskforhelp 6mo ago
    Or perhaps OpenAI/AI startups would've even hired the guy too
- endofreach 6mo ago
  "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.
  - indubioprorubik 6mo ago
    He is economic growth incarnated.
    - zombot 6mo ago
      You mean incarcerated.
- randyrand 6mo ago
  In click fraud, it's the platform company defrauding the ads purchasers, by claiming the clicks are legit. All this guy did was break TOS, and find a broken business model. No fraud. Should have found a lawyer.
genie3io 6mo ago
[dead]
grujicd 6mo ago
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.
- clouedoc 6mo ago
  Yes this is the solution to this problem. This is what SoundCloud is doing AFAIK.
- rahkiin 6mo ago
  Which is why it is not supported by the top 5 music distribution companies which have contracts with Spotify
- pjc50 6mo ago
  > Bots listening to thousands of songs would not make a difference in this model. The ad revenue from the bots would be distributed. The same problem happens on Youtube.
- zenmac 6mo ago
  >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. Why don't we have a platform like that?
Aerroon 6mo ago
Would people botting in video games get a similar sentence?
bentobean 6mo ago
> The streaming service Deezer said earlier this year it is receiving more than 60,000 fully AI-generated tracks daily… Wow!

54 points by nstj 6mo ago

I’m seeing the future and it’s some sort of AI gray goo all over everything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo

hsbauauvhabzb 6mo ago
Soooo basically the internet as of today?
ithkuil 6mo ago
Explains the Fermi paradox

QuantumNomad_ 6mo ago

> 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.

burnt-resistor 6mo ago
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.
- phil21 6mo ago
  That is all email addresses, it’s part of the spec. Aside from broken implementations of course. Periods are optional. Edit: Woops yeah, meant pluses. Dots are somewhat common as optional these days but not universal.
  - basilikum 6mo ago
    Are you sure you mean dots and not pluses?
  - rahkiin 6mo ago
    False, this is only with Gmail. And not even true for Gmail workspaces.
  - fc417fc802 6mo ago
    He's talking about aliases, not independent email addresses.
  - burnt-resistor 6mo ago
    Which "spec"? Many specifications exist and not every MTA, mailbox, nor email client understands the latest and every implementation is guaranteed to have quirks, but here are the most common: RFCs 822, 2822, 4952, 5336, 6530. There is no the spec. Subaddressing isn't standardized, but there was a half-hearted RFC on that with too many extra features. How email user parts are interpreted is up to the MTA, mailbox, or email client. Plus subaddressing informally as a hack has existed since at least 2005 according to my rusty memory. It's, therefore, a de facto standard. Use it where possible to track down leaks of personal information, but it's likely to bite with some gotchas. I used to maintain a @{{name}}.name domain and email server where all emails went to a single catchall account without setup or subaddressing needed to disambiguate which source email correspondence was from. > Dots are somewhat common as optional these days but not universal. This handwaving tautology is meaningless.
applfanboysbgon 6mo ago
A "fake" e-mail address is one that is not clearly tied to your real identity, citizen. There is no reason to use such non-identifying addresses unless you have something to hide. Comply, for the children.
vunderba 6mo ago
Could the article be referring to subaddressing? e.g. yourname+amazon@gmail.com yourname+etsy@gmail.com yourname+itunes@gmail.com I still don't really think this counts as fake emails, since it has legitimate use cases, but I suppose if their backend couldn't tell the difference and a single person used sub-addressing to sign up multiple times that you could argue that these are fake-ish.

helsinkiandrew 6mo ago

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 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.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

bob1029 6mo ago

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.

jonathanlydall 6mo ago
He essentially defrauded $8M from media streaming companies, if the ToS violation is the easiest path for the companies to have him quite rightfully convicted of what is indisputably criminal behaviour then I have zero qualms about that. Does this behaviour open the door for ToS being abused? I have no legal expertise, but I would expect in cases like this that everyone would rationally come to the conclusion that the defendant's behaviour was wrong and unethical and the ToS just made it easy for the plaintiffs to point out to the court that they do in fact explicitly forbid such activities, making it an open and shut case. From headlines I've seen of around ToS enforcement over the decades, courts don't seem to just view them the same as a physically signed legal agreement and will not enforce outrageous clauses in them.
- phire 6mo ago
  The steaming services won't have lost any money on this. It's the advertisers who paid for ads to get played to the bot accounts, and (depending on how the advertising deals were structured) other artists with legitimate listeners might have received smaller revenue cuts.
  - jongjong 6mo ago
    Exactly and most of the advertisers are attention monopolies anyways and only using ads to reinforce their monopolies.
- twothreeone 6mo ago
  > rightfully convicted of what is indisputably criminal behaviour Consider the opposite view: if pretending to be a human is "criminal behavior" there are about 8 billion criminals walking around on this planet.. and in this case our current legal system appears to be hijacked for the protection of utterly nonsensical, hopelessly broken, ancient business models from a rent-seeking, anti-consumer, creator-exploiting, trillion-dollar corporate mafia, which would like nothing better than to track, spy, and force-feed their audience at every turn.

lemontheme 6mo ago

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

eddiewithzato 6mo ago
yes it’s fraud since you get money per listens
- prmoustache 6mo ago
  I see it as using the system provided the way it is meant to be used.
  - JasonADrury 6mo ago
    https://artists.spotify.com/artificial-streaming https://artists.spotify.com/artificial-streaming Spotify clearly communicates that this is not allowed.
    - prmoustache 6mo ago
      Yeah it is like putting a huge red button in the middle of an otherwise empty room with a small "don't press the button" sign on the wall behind you when you enter the room.
      - JasonADrury 6mo ago
        Right, yes, because the people doing this totally don't know that they're breaking the law?
        prmoustache 6mo ago

huijzer 6mo ago

So let me get this straight, Big players defraud the common people -> no prosecution Common man defrauds the big players -> prosecution

p0w3n3d 6mo ago
Could you provide an example of the former?
- pjc50 6mo ago
  The big example is probably AI training not being counted as piracy.
  - JasonADrury 6mo ago
    How is that an example of the big players defrauding the common people?
- twothreeone 6mo ago
  - 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 - ...
  - JasonADrury 6mo ago
    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/ 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-pay-3-billion-resolve-criminal-and-civil-investigations-sales-practices 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.

phire 6mo ago

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.

gmerc 6mo ago
Should have used OpenClaw and they’d given him investment instead
- Imustaskforhelp 6mo ago
  Or perhaps OpenAI/AI startups would've even hired the guy too
endofreach 6mo ago
"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.
- indubioprorubik 6mo ago
  He is economic growth incarnated.
  - zombot 6mo ago
    You mean incarcerated.
randyrand 6mo ago
In click fraud, it's the platform company defrauding the ads purchasers, by claiming the clicks are legit. All this guy did was break TOS, and find a broken business model. No fraud. Should have found a lawyer.

genie3io 6mo ago

[dead]

grujicd 6mo ago

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.

clouedoc 6mo ago
Yes this is the solution to this problem. This is what SoundCloud is doing AFAIK.
rahkiin 6mo ago
Which is why it is not supported by the top 5 music distribution companies which have contracts with Spotify
pjc50 6mo ago
> Bots listening to thousands of songs would not make a difference in this model. The ad revenue from the bots would be distributed. The same problem happens on Youtube.
zenmac 6mo ago
>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. Why don't we have a platform like that?

Aerroon 6mo ago

Would people botting in video games get a similar sentence?

bentobean 6mo ago

> The streaming service Deezer said earlier this year it is receiving more than 60,000 fully AI-generated tracks daily… Wow!