Feds say it's the first US criminal case involving artificially inflated music streaming.

I am just impressed by the idea and execution. Just wow. Too bad he took it too far.

  • @[email protected]English
    58•13 days ago

    Definitely an abuse of the system, but I’m struggling to see where criminal law says you can’t make a bunch of fake accounts to listen to garbage music.

    • @[email protected]English
      27•13 days ago

      In agreeing to be paid by music streaming platforms they almost certainly agreed not to do exactly this. Which makes it fraud.

        • @[email protected]English
          9•12 days ago

          I think that depends on intent and amount of money involved, but I’m definitely not a lawyer.

          • sunzu2
            1•11 days ago

            Corpos commit cyber crimes against wage slaves daily… Feds don’t do Jack shit about it … I wonder why this would in the land of the Law 🤣

    • @conciselyverboseEnglish
      25•13 days ago

      Fraud is pretty broad and covers most things that deliberately misrepresent reality to take money from someone else.

  • @[email protected]English
    48•13 days ago

    In a 2017 email to himself, Smith calculated that he could stream his songs 661,440 times daily, potentially earning $3,307.20 per day and up to $1.2 million annually.

    Great idea, but why would you email yourself about it?

    • veeeEnglish
      23•12 days ago

      I have a friend that I’ve tried to convince using a notes app, but he swears that emailing himself notes and to-do lists is more effective. He’s wrong, but to each their own.

      • @[email protected]English
        9•12 days ago

        Oh, sure. I get that. Sending yourself reminders is absolutely understandable. Sending yourself documented evidence of your plans to defraud someone is entirely different.

        • @[email protected]English
          2•11 days ago

          Recently, a bunch of people on tik tok found this “bug” in their banking app where you can write a bad check, then withdraw the funds before it clears… Then started crying about it when their balances updated

          Dude definitely thought he discovered a cool new life hack

        • veeeEnglish
          4•11 days ago

          I can definitely follow his logic, but there are better tools available.

      • JustEnoughDucksEnglish
        3•12 days ago

        Google keep used to (don’t use it anymore) store your notes “backed up” by email. You could view all your notes in gmail.

        Maybe it was something like that?

        • veeeEnglish
          2•11 days ago

          I do vaguely remember that. Could be?

  • sneak100 [she/her, they/them]English
    41•12 days ago

    So when rich people do this it’s called “innovative” and “disrupting the market”, but if you do it FBI busts down your door for being a criminal. Sounds like freedom to me jack

    • sunzu2
      1•11 days ago

      The better people… Shiti organics just suck too much

  • @[email protected]English
    9•11 days ago

    I’ve thought of this, but don’t have the wherewithal to actually make a project come to fruition.

    I’m also not a lawyer, but I’ve read multiple articles on this, and it doesn’t seem like any legal violation. Corporation got lazy, didn’t confirm where 10m in royalties went and under what circumstance, and got burned.

    Finally a corp gets scammed by the common man.

    I say good on him.