A 22-year old hacker named Skylar Dalziel has pleaded guilty to illegally accessing cloud storage accounts and stealing unreleased music from popular artists like Coldplay, Shawn Mendes, and Bebe Rexha. The thief made around £42,000 from selling 291,941 music tracks she stole online. Prosecutors described Dalziel as using the unreleased songs “to make money for herself by selling it on the dark web.”
The thefts came to light in June 2021 when Sony Music Entertainment reported Upsahl’s compromised cloud account to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). The crime was traced back to Dalziel through an account selling unreleased music from different artists on an online forum.
City of London Police reported that some of the money acquired from selling the stolen music was transferred to bank accounts in the US. Working with Homeland Security Investigations, they are attempting to identify the people linked to these accounts.
Dalziel admitted to eleven copyright offenses, one count of transferring criminal property, and three counts of acquiring, using, and possessing criminal property. She was handed a 21-month suspended sentence and 180 hours of unpaid work.
Det Con Daryl Fryatt, from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit stated that the sentencing “sends a clear message that we have the ability and tools to locate cyber criminals and hold them to account for their actions.” Stealing copyrighted content for personal financial gain is against the law and jeopardizes the livelihoods of the artists and the people working with them.
This case highlights the challenges of protecting intellectual property in a digital age. It is crucial to increase awareness about the consequences of cyber theft and implement stronger security measures to safeguard creative works
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