nevermind i reread the op, you go Cock_Inspecting_Asexual!

quick edit: actually except for the weird diction surrounding child rape. idk maybe i’m dumb and it was intentionally uncomfortable.

that’s fair, my absolute statement doesn’t reflect the exclusive way anti fraud laws are written. you certainly might find and successfully exploit legal ways to lie for financial gain, but at best it’s unethical and at worst you’ll have to defend why your deceit isn’t criminal fraud in a lawsuit. it kind of depends on who you piss off the most, imo.

uh, yes? it's at the least fraud fs? the article says the doj is charging mike smith with three money laundering charges and one count of wire fraud. obviously the wire fraud charge comes from an argument that smith defrauded the distribution companies into illegitimately paying out royalties for false streams. note that the artificial intelligence solution only comes into the argument for the purposes of how he committed the crime, it really had nothing to do with the crime itself, at least intrinsically. if you read the press release from the doj, you can see that they make a pretty airtight argument that, quote:

SMITH made numerous misrepresentations to the Streaming Platforms in furtherance of the fraud scheme. For example, SMITH repeatedly lied to the Streaming Platforms when he used false names and other information to create the Bot Accounts and when he agreed to abide by terms and conditions that prohibited streaming manipulation. SMITH also deceived the Streaming Platforms by making it appear as if legitimate users were in control of the Bot Accounts and streaming music when, in fact, the Bot Accounts were hard coded to stream SMITH’s music billions of times. SMITH also caused the Streaming Platforms to falsely report billions of streams of his music, even though SMITH knew that those streams were in fact caused by the Bot Accounts rather than real human listeners.

SMITH’s hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs were streamed by his Bot Accounts billions of times, which allowed him to fraudulently obtain more than $10 million in royalties.

it is not illegal to lie. it is absolutely illegal to lie for the purposes of financial gain. sure, i'm not disagreeing that what he did could not somehow be construed as something of a robin hood character arc (even tho he most certainly did this for the purposes of his own personal enrichment). but he almost definitely is guilty of the wire fraud charge and i do have a strong feeling, based on the prosecutorial level of this case, the involvement of a specialized division of the fbi, and his purported co-conspirators; that the money laundering charges are ironclad as well. frankly, i'm hoping his co-conspirators actually do end up going to trial and we get to learn what the company that aided in his fraud actually was. on fucking god it'd be one thing if he ran this grift machine for a little while, paid off a lil bit of his debts and all, maybe even lived off of it. but to steal $10 million fucking dollars with it, even when he knew he was committing fraud and had to explicitly hide his criminal activity??? no shit the fbi was hot on your trail. what an absolutely, colossal dipshit michael smith must be. i respect the ingenuity but it is so blindingly obvious that 10 million dollars was egregiously too many times to press a "free money button" you just invented in a capitalist autocratic hellscape.

QUICK EDIT: i do just wanna say also i did not downvote u/shani66 and i just wanted to contribute to discussion. just noticed after i posted someone had downvoted them which is kinda goofy of whoever that is.

that’s a monistic point of view. you clearly have never lived in or near a food desert, or somewhere where fast food is the only option, because oftentimes at a local scale restaurants do buy up all available food resources. sure. these people could subsist off of wild fucking berries outside instead. why not. the choices of large restaurant megacorps weigh heavy on millions.

now, this’n right here kids is a prime specimen of what those highfalutin desk jockeys call a “global citizen.”

we call the 2 cuts of meat we traditionally take off of poultry’s arms “wings.” typically you’ll get one half of the arm versus another. you’d either get a drumstick wing, with all the meat on one bone; or flats, which have less meat & two bones, much like your lower arm.

chicken wings served this way are very popular here but many do not like or do not want to deal with the bones. so additionally, processed “boneless” chicken wings are available. they’re exactly the same thing as chicken nuggets usually, just bigger. ground poultry reconstituted into morsels

i misheard lady gaga’s bad romance the first few times. “want you in my rear window, baby, you're sick;” came across to me as “while in morrowind, your baby is sick.” thought it was a commentary of some sorts lmao.

be careful. putting all your eggs in one basket & all. someone could easily walk away with such a bag, no matter how diligent you think you are.

Lmao, what a wild assumption that they could take whatever icons they like, with no basis in reality.

that’s…. exactly what they do buddy. you don’t seem the type to care for counter-examples so i won’t even try and list any of the many, many fucking instances of this happening irl