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Victimless "Crimes"
To avoid committing one myself, i.e., politics, I'll quote Google's response to that search term:
"A victimless crime is generally an illegal criminal act that does not have an identifiable victim. Many of the laws that criminalize harmless behavior are based on opinions about morality. Assisted suicide, loitering, begging, solicitation, recreational drug use, and gambling are some examples of victimless crimes."
"Crimeless" Victims
What about the converse? Some corporation loses millions, and the "alleged perpetrator" is accused of fraud, which can be a genuine crime. But is this fraud? When one reads about activities such as the one I relate below, it's hard to resist a bit of schadenfreude or to not admire the "fraudster" if that's what he is. But first, a quick introduction to the streaming music ecosystem:
- You're a recording artist! Famous (or not), incredibly popular (or not), and you've recorded music that can be found on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, and the other usual suspects.
- I'm a fan! I "stream*" your music on my computer and I pay for the privilege. Maybe I've paid a subscription fee to the streaming service, maybe I listen to advertising. The streaming service gets money from me for the music or perhaps from the advertiser. It keeps some of the money and sends some to the artist.
- Every once in a while you, the artist, get a few cents or fractions thereof for all the times your music has been played.
At least that's how it normally works. To make real money, you would have to be some combination of astonishingly prolific and amazingly popular. Or you'd have to be Michael Smith** who allegedly managed to be both in a criminal sort of way. The story has been retold in any number of articles of which this is only one. What he (once again allegedly) did was to use artificial intelligence to create a large number of musical compositions, gave them random names, and placed them on Spotify and other streaming services. Then he created mock listeners using accomplices to create bots to "listen" to these songs, thus entitling him to the fraction of a penny for each "play."
After reading the story of this scheme, I found it hard to weigh the obvious wrongth of what he (allegedly, of course) did against my admiration for his ingenuity. "Why didn't I think of it first" was my original reaction. Perhaps my spleen isn't sufficiently larcenous, or maybe I was intuitively aware that it wasn't quite worth the effort. He collected 10 million dollars, which I don't think is enough to risk prosecution. (He seemed to be aware he was committing a crime.) But was he? I'm not so sure. In a more benign scenario, let's say I sang some random ditty, such as the sea shanty I perpetrated on TikTok at the request of our marketing team. Next, to remind me never to do that again, I set my computer to play it as a loop and left the room when I could take it no more. Same "crime," albeit lower stakes.
I can't imagine being prosecuted for that, although I admit I didn't check to see if the sea shanty was copyrighted. If nothing else, my singing it was clearly abusive to all, maybe even to my computer.
There are all sorts of laws. far too many and varied to state that Mr. Smith didn't allegedly break one or more of them. Will a jury stop laughing long enough to hand up a verdict of guilty of whatever? Maybe. I also note with some combination of alarm and jealousy that there are plenty of other alleged crimes that AI can and surely will aid, abet, and perhaps commit. If I eventually read what punishment Mr. Smith endures, I'll be sure to furnish an update.
* Which means I listen to it. Or maybe it's playing in the background. Or is supposed to mean that.
**To be carefully distinguished from Valentine Michael Smith.
I'm far too stubborn to rearrange my asterisks, but when I spell-checked this blog, I was informed that schadenfreude was misspelled. It's not, it's just a German word often used in English. Far more entertaining was the recommended substitution: Scheherezade!
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