> SMITH pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud

I need this guy’s lawyer

Imagine showing this headline to someone in the 80s or before.

Part of this does seem objectionable. But uhh, the other half, yikes. Superintelligence: ok for capital, not allowed for individuals.

> "Michael Smith exploited super intelligence technology to generate a fraud,” said U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald. “By flooding music streaming platforms with automated bots in the place of consumers, and fake songs in the place of creativity, Smith robbed millions in royalty payments from genuine artists and their fans. This Office is committed to ensuring the integrity of all markets, and protecting the public from those who use super intelligence for fraud."

Wow, uh, he had a time machine?

> Smith’s streaming fraud lasted from 2017 to 2024

Won't somebody please think of the artists? /s

People here in HN seem to believe that royalty collecting companies are some sort of charitable organizations for the benefit of the artists. But their conduct and practices range from questionable [1] to outright fraudulent [2]. And now they manage to fly below the radar, because everyone (artists included) is busy bashing Spotify. These companies would sue Spotify out of existence had they offered the option to directly pay the artists instead of going through them.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/1302np/jasrac_this_i...

[2] https://torrentfreak.com/huge-scandal-engulfs-greek-anti-pir...

Feels like this is missing the bigger story, that this guy was using ai (AI!) to generate music in 2017-2024! /s

Genuine question: what if my agents produce better output if I stream audio to them while they work? Is that fraud?

Feels like some kind of sentence to make an example of someone to scare off other people ala going after grandmas for napster. There's way too much of this going on on instagram and tiktok etc etc already. They went after this guy but is letting many people get away with it.