A female dark web hacker who made around £42,000 (Rs 44.75 lakh) from selling unreleased music from bands and musicians like Coldplay, Bebe Rexha, Melanie Martinez, Taylor Upsahl and Shawn Mendes has avoided jail, according to a report The independent. The woman, identified as 22-year-old Skylar Dalziel from Luton, was instead jailed for 21 months, suspended for two years at Luton Crown Court. She will also have to complete 180 hours of unpaid work and 10 days of rehabilitation activities.
Ms Dalziel faced 14 charges relating to dealing in copyrighted music without the consent of the artists or labels. She pleaded guilty to nine copyright infringements and four computer misuse infringements.
“Dalziel completely ignored the musician’s creativity and hard work in producing original songs and the resulting potential loss of income,” said Crown Prosecution Service specialist prosecutor Richard Partridge.
“These types of activities not only affect the artists themselves, but also employees of the record companies involved. They selfishly used their music to make money for themselves by selling it on the dark web.”
Cloud access
She reportedly stole the songs by illegally accessing several cloud storage accounts linked to the popular artists. A raid on her Winchester Gardens home last January led to the recovery of a hard drive containing a whopping 291,941 songs.
Police told the court that a search of Ms Dalziel’s PayPal and bank account revealed she received payments worth a total of £42,049 between April 2021 and January 2023.
“Stealing copyrighted material for one’s own financial gain is illegal. It jeopardizes the work of artists and the livelihoods of the people who work with them to create and release their music,” said Daryl Fryatt, investigator at the Intellectual Property Crime Unit.
“It is estimated that this type of criminal activity contributes to over 80,000 job losses each year.”
Also read | Coldplay concert in Ahmedabad: Hotel increases price after booking, social media users smoke
The lid was blown on Ms Dalziel’s operation after Sony Music Entertainment filed a complaint in 2021, informing the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) that a cloud account linked to US artist Upsahl had been compromised and 40 non- released songs were sold online. .
The IFPI and the Recording Industry Association of America managed to discover that an account on an online forum was selling not only songs related to Sony’s label, but also songs such as Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.