this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
1084 points (99.0% liked)

Technology

59099 readers
3172 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

The songs that the AI CEO provided to Smith originally had file names full of randomized numbers and letters such as "n_7a2b2d74-1621-4385-895d-b1e4af78d860.mp3," the DOJ noted in its detailed press release.

When uploading them to streaming platforms, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music, the man would then change the songs' names to words like "Zygotes," "Zygotic," and "Zyme Bedewing," whatever that is.

The artist naming convention also followed a somewhat similar pattern, with names ranging from the normal-sounding "Calvin Mann" to head-scratchers like "Calorie Event," "Calms Scorching," and "Calypso Xored."

To manufacture streams for these fake songs, Smith allegedly used bots that stream the songs billions of times without any real person listening. As with similar schemes, the bots' meaningless streams were ultimately converted to royalty paychecks for the people behind them.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] JIMMERZ@lemm.ee 97 points 1 month ago (21 children)

He found a flaw in the system and exploited it. Although he didn’t do anything particularly wrong, the tools he used allowed him to do it. Yet, somehow he has to pay the consequences and the companies that made the tools to exploit the system are not liable. Got it.

[–] Ruxias@lemmy.world 31 points 1 month ago (6 children)

America's darling Jeff Bezos exploited a flaw in his book suppliers policies to gain an unfair edge on competitors in the early days of Amazon. Best business man ever: give him the key to the city and a dick-shaped rocket ship.

He also got rich daddy and rich friend money to get money for his totally original and non-derivative idea of "selling things online". Maybe that's where this guy went wrong? No rich daddy?

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The "selling things online" idea had been tried repeatedly before Amazon, and always failed. What Bezos did was find a way to actually (eventually) make money at it. That was a business strategy tour de force that was quite impressively executed. That's not to say that Bezos is a good employer or a nice person. But it's often the case that it's not the originality of the idea that matters, as much as how it's executed.

[–] Ruxias@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Umm... eBay was around before amazon and was largely successful. So no, he isn't a ground-breaker, nor am I suggesting eBay was either. And yeah you can talk about differences between their platforms but my point still stands.

All of these types "stand on the shoulders of giants" as they say. Except the giant is the taxpayer money that created the fertile ground that allowed their wealth in the first place. (E.g. the internet) And when they're sufficiently successful, they love pulling up that ladder you and I and everyone else paid for.

Private profits, public losses. Same as it ever was.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (18 replies)