I don't see the problem here. what do you think?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly3ld9wy3eo

A musician in the US has been accused of using artificial intelligence (AI) tools and thousands of bots to fraudulently stream songs billions of times in order to claim millions of dollars of royalties.

Michael Smith, of North Carolina, has been charged with three counts of wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy charges.

Prosecutors say it is the first criminal case of its kind they have handled.

"Through his brazen fraud scheme, Smith stole millions in royalties that should have been paid to musicians, songwriters, and other rights holders whose songs were legitimately streamed," said US attorney Damian Williams.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/09/05/michael-smith-ai-music-arrested/75086815007/

Michael Smith, 52, was arrested by federal authorities for allegedly orchestrating an AI-aided music streaming fraud scheme from 2017 to 2024 that made him $10 million in royalties.

 

the problem is under arrest now, that´s why it is hard to see him.

 

His mistake was not setting himself up as a huge legitimate streaming business like <I'm not stupid enough to name one> etc. That's how you get away with fraud and ripping people off for millions in royalties. Money laundering... like diverting income from the country you earn it to a country where you don't have to pay tax? His biggest crime was taking a big chunk of change from these honest, law abiding companies.

 

10 mil over the course of 7 years? Small fish. Upper tier income per year, though. The whole streaming business reeks of legal and illegal criminal activity set up to rip off the content creators, so this makes me feel like hm-hm... not too excited. Small fish.

He should have slowly backed off at some point and maybe nobody would notice, and he would still get some very small income...

Personally, give me a mil and I'll never be poor again. Making money when you have money is easy. The problem is most of the people don't have enough money to invest into properties, stock market, businesses... so we stay poor.

 

Last edited: Sep 11, 2024

Small thief robs big Thief..

No prob with the criminal platforms they create

 

The main problem is not thieves. Those who are robbed are not guilty either. Those who buy stolen property are to blame. If the listeners' music literacy increases and they don't listen to every piece of music, the artificial intelligence will be unconsciously idle and its project will fail, and thieves will not steal in this way. Every unfortunate thing that happens in the world is due to the illiteracy of the people. Literacy has nothing to do with technology and modern life. A person can live in billion dollar palaces but be illiterate and an illiterate person is a good prey for thieves.

 

Very true. The whole payout system, that puts all money in one pot and sums all clicks and distributes per click, and not per paying customer's clicks, is the fraud.
It is intentional, because that way, the labels in conjunction with playlist curating, can siphon off all the royalties.
Crying out in pain, while they hit you...

This could all be easily prevented, by a simple court order, that the royalties distributed over streaming platforms have individual paying customers, like buyers of CDs and are not like radio or TV. And therefore each customer's payment royalty share, needs to be distributed to the artists only, that he listened too.

Not true. It takes a lot knowledge and experience and self discipline, not to fall victim of greed and fear in the stock market. Most people lack this discipline to resist FOMO and are also not willing to learn from their mistakes.

 

This guy had bots that listened to the trax, not subscribers. For me, what he did was and is legal.

 

How is this statement true? Technically. If someone streams 1 billion songs using bots; the songs which are fraudulently "listened to" by the bots, would result in the rightful owner of the songs being paid those royalties. If the songs are fake AI made junk "instant music", whoever posted those songs would be paid the royalties.

How would this guy be paid royalties due to other artists for songs the bots "played" fraudulently? Yes, he is stealing from the platform this way; but how is he stealing from anyone else? The bots never "played" their music.

So his scheme is obviously royalty theft from the platforms, for music that was never played; but isn't saying these royalties would be due anyone else a false statement? Maybe I'm just missing something here...

 

It does not sound like a hoax to me either. The bots listening to music are legitimate; bots are, after all, AI; we must train AI because AI is cool; and bots and AI are now creating better music for bot children to listen to. Seriously, why is it fraud when they pay artists for views, hits, or listeners? Youtube, Spotify and Apple are paying us rubbish anyway; that is a real scam, not this guy.

 

Wonder if this falls under white-collar crimes.

 

Last edited: Nov 4, 2024