I don’t even see a real crime. A throw away credit card is “fraud”? The streaming service allowed it and then retroactively decided paying out to someone streaming his own AI slop was fraud?

And he got a more severe sentence for “deterrence”?

Meanwhile I see dangerous law breaking by police covered by YouTubers like The Civil Rights Lawyer and not once have I seen a judge give a more severe sentence for “deterrence”.

“Smith’s streaming fraud didn’t just hurt platforms but genuine artists who share royalty pools on streaming services, the DOJ claimed. By cutting into that pool, Smith reduced royalties across the board”

Maybe this is the real problem. Maybe royalties should be per play, and not pulled from a shared pool. It’s not like streaming services don’t already keep a count of each song played.

Starting in 2017, Smith began using fake email accounts and “fraudulently obtained debit cards” to create “thousands of fraudulent accounts” on services including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music, the DOJ said. He then employed software that pushed the bots to continuously stream songs that he claimed to own, which the DOJ said were AI-generated.

Seems the charges were because he used stolen cards to psetnup the accounts.

I know a few actual bands have released “sleeping music” which is just like 8 hours of silence for the diehard fans to let run so the ban earns money. Theoretically if he had convinced real people to make the accounts then had them turn bots on, it could be technically legal?

Especially if instead of botting directly, he used automation software to start/stop similar playlists across the various accounts while on shuffle.

Like, make it a task on fiber: make a YouTube account and turn it over to me.

There’s a very good chance that’s already happening, even among “real” artists. I think it’s what Drake unintentionally snitched on himself for doing when he tried to sue his own label.