> 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.
He certainly didn’t defraud artists or their fans. This is false framing. He defrauded the streaming platform, which I’m sure the jury would be far less empathetic towards.
The money he got came from the same shared pool that the other artists get money from.
This is true, but kind of on the streaming platforms for having a terrible pooled monetization scheme that lets high frequency users allocate the subscription money of low frequency users.