A hacker who made £42,000 selling unreleased Coldplay songs has been spared jail time despite admitting multiple copyright offenses
Luton: A 22-year-old hacker named Skylar Dalziel made quite a splash by selling unreleased tracks from big names like Coldplay and Shawn Mendes. She raked in a whopping £42,000 from her shady dealings on the dark web.
How did she pull it off? Well, she hacked into cloud storage accounts of these artists. When police raided her home last January, they found a treasure trove of music—almost 292,000 songs on hard drives!
In court, she got a 21-month prison sentence, but it’s suspended for two years. She admitted to nine copyright offenses and four related to computer misuse. It’s a big deal, and the authorities are taking it seriously.
Detective Constable Daryl Fryatt from the City of London Police made it clear that stealing music hurts not just the artists but also the people who work with them. It’s estimated that this kind of crime leads to over 80,000 job losses every year.
Dalziel was reportedly working with some overseas suspects, and the police are on the hunt to track them down. The prosecutor pointed out that she showed no respect for the hard work artists put into their music.
In a related incident, Sony Music reported that a cloud account belonging to artist Taylor Upsahl was hacked, leading to 40 unreleased tracks being sold online. The authorities connected the dots back to Dalziel.
They even found a spreadsheet showing she sold these tracks to various customers. A look into her PayPal and bank accounts revealed she made over £42,000 from April 2021 to January 2023. The court has ordered that all her equipment used in the crime be destroyed.
