Unreleased music tracks are generating bitcoins for hacker group Music Mafia. The group that leaked Kanye claims to have more unreleased material from hundreds of popular hip-hop, R&B, pop, and electronic music artists.
A cursory glance at the group’s website will give you a small taste of music the group has released before, alongside a sampling of unreleased songs that are available for sale for BTC.
Understandably, this type of leaked content can be very damaging to the music industry, so it’s no surprise that the RIAA is trying to crack down on the hacker group. Music Mafia has proved their chops by releasing two unreleased Kayne West songs online last year, which quickly spread all over the internet.
More than a year later, the group remains active with an unreleased music auction that is slated to end on August 4th.
The current auction offers unreleased songs like Demi Lovato’s ‘Somebody New,’ Young Thug’s ‘Abrakadabra,’ and Drake’s ‘Don’t Run’ for prices as low as 0.05 BTC, or around $380 US dollars at current bitcoin prices.
A few weeks ago, the RIAA obtained a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) subpoena from a federal judge ordering Tonic Domains Corp to identify the party who registered the group’s .to domain.
The subpoena is seeking the registrant’s name, physical address, IP address, and the email address used to register the domain. Tonic Domains Corp has yet to respond to this request, and currently, Music Mafia’s site is still up and running.
It’s unlikely that the RIAA will have much success even if Tonic Domains Corp does hand over the registrant information, as the group has been pretty savvy about their internet presence. They only accept payments in bitcoins, which are harder to trace, and the group has absolutely no social media presence and warns potential customers of that fact on their release website.
Universal is evil. Fuck them too