A woman dark web hacker who made around £42,000 (Rs 44.75 lakh) selling unreleased music from bands and musicians such as Coldplay, Bebe Rexha, Melanie Martinez, Taylor Upsahl and Shawn Mendes has avoided jail, according to a report in The Independent. The woman, identified as 22-year-old Skylar Dalziel of Luton has instead been handed 21 months in prison suspended for two years by the Luton Crown Court. Additionally, she will have to complete 180 hours of unpaid work and 10 rehabilitative activity days.
Ms Dalziel was facing 14 counts relating to the trading of copyrighted music without the consent of the recording artists or labels. She pleaded guilty to nine copyright offences and four computer misuse offences.
“Dalziel had complete disregard for the musician’s creativity and hard work producing original songs and the subsequent potential loss of earnings,” said Richard Partridge, specialist prosecutor of the Crown Prosecution Service.
“This type of activity doesn’t just impact on the artists themselves but also on employees of the record companies involved. She selfishly used their music to make money for herself by selling it on the dark web.”
Cloud access
She reportedly stole the tracks by illegally accessing several cloud storage accounts linked to the popular artists. A raid at her home in Winchester Gardens last January led to the recovery of a hard drive containing up to 291,941 songs.
The police told the court that a review of Ms Dalziel’s PayPal and bank account showed she received payments worth a total of £42,049 between April 2021 and January 2023.
“Stealing copyrighted material for your own financial gain is illegal. It jeopardises the work of artists and the livelihoods of the people who work with them to create and release their music,” said Daryl Fryatt, a detective constable at the intellectual property crime unit.
“It’s estimated that this type of criminal activity contributes to over 80,000 job losses each year.”
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The lid on Ms Dalziel’s operation was blown 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 unreleased tracks extracted were being sold online.
The IFPI and the Recording Industry Association of America managed to uncover that an account on an online forum was selling songs not only related to Sony’s label but also to the likes of Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.
