Sony Hacked

From NZ Herald

A British court has sentenced two hackers to 100 hours of community service for stealing a treasure trove of unreleased music - including Michael Jackson tracks - from the US servers of Sony Music Entertainment.

Officials said music aficionados James Marks, 27, and James McCormick, 26, used their home computers to access Sony's servers and scour them for Jackson-related material.

The pair downloaded nearly 8,000 files, including completed or partial tracks, artwork, and videos relating to Jackson and other unspecified Sony artists.

The precise nature of the unreleased material hasn't been made clear - Sony refused to comment on the case.

A statement from Britain's Serious and Organised Crime Agency identified some of the material as stems, which are audio tracks that can be used in mixes and overdubs.

Marks and McCormick, who met online, were arrested in May 2011 after Sony alerted UK law enforcement to the breach.

Chat logs recovered from their computers showed that they planned to sell or trade some of the files.

I wonder if Elvis material was hacked, worth doing for the penalty.

What does Sony do, keep all their music from their vaults on an online server?

Yeah, that's kind of disturbing: an on-line, hackable server is the so-called "vault" for UNreleased material?

I think perhaps that policy may change! (Whatever happened to real "vaults"?)

rjm (Looking at it again, could be that they had been "inside," or how would they know where to look? So that means anyone who works on these servers, as they currently exist, would possibly have the ability to later hack them.)

Last edited by rjm on Sat Jan 12, 2013 9:50 am, edited 2 times in total.

I would rather have them hack the Turner Vaults so the bootleggers can give us some new, unseen EOT footage.

I wouldnt mind doing 100 hrs of community service to get EOT extended and EIC, if only I knew anything about computers.

Sounds like fun -- just steal the footage/recordings you want released? The thing is, though, is that stolen footage/recordings is sold, bootlegged (maybe, or maybe not), and then only a certain percentage of people who would like to see it and/or hear it, will ever get to do so. So, it's kind of a "nice" fantasy, but the reality is that rare, unreleased footage/recordings should be protected in a real, genuine VAULT. So that one day, everyone who wishes to see and/or hear the footage/recordings will get a fair chance to do so.

It also said there were other artists who were stolen. If they hadn't been caught, they might have thought "oh this? Nobody wants this." And maybe they discard it, not knowing its value. And WE do. It shouldn't be up to thieves.

rjm

I wouldnt mind doing 100 hrs of community service to get EOT extended and EIC, if only I knew anything about computers.

Crime does pay.

Finally we are going to get a chance to hear the Kissin' Cousins "Barefoot Ballad" outtakes!

There's an interesting backstory to this. A couple of years ago a posthumous Michael Jackson album was released with 3 songs on it submitted by a former friend of Michael's named Eddie Cascio. Cascio submitted 12 tracks which he claimed Michael recorded when he was staying at his house in 2007. When fans heard the songs there was immediate outrage at the fact that the voice singing sounded nothing like Michael at all and exactly like a soundalike that was well known in the fan community named Jason Malachi. The two that hacked the server did it with the sole intention of gathering evidence to prove it is not Jackson on the tracks. There is still no resolution to the controversy. Being a big MJ fan, I've heard the songs in question and they are obviously not him.

There's an interesting backstory to this. A couple of years ago a posthumous Michael Jackson album was released with 3 songs on it submitted by a former friend of Michael's named Eddie Cascio. Cascio submitted 12 tracks which he claimed Michael recorded when he was staying at his house in 2007. When fans heard the songs there was immediate outrage at the fact that the voice singing sounded nothing like Michael at all and exactly like a soundalike that was well known in the fan community named Jason Malachi. The two that hacked the server did it with the sole intention of gathering evidence to prove it is not Jackson on the tracks. There is still no resolution to the controversy. Being a big MJ fan, I've heard the songs in question and they are obviously not him.

This Cascio character comes up with 12 tracks that he claims were recorded, in his own home, by Jacko in 2007.

I can't see how hacking into the Sony server would prove they were Jacko or not.

There's an interesting backstory to this. A couple of years ago a posthumous Michael Jackson album was released with 3 songs on it submitted by a former friend of Michael's named Eddie Cascio. Cascio submitted 12 tracks which he claimed Michael recorded when he was staying at his house in 2007. When fans heard the songs there was immediate outrage at the fact that the voice singing sounded nothing like Michael at all and exactly like a soundalike that was well known in the fan community named Jason Malachi. The two that hacked the server did it with the sole intention of gathering evidence to prove it is not Jackson on the tracks. There is still no resolution to the controversy. Being a big MJ fan, I've heard the songs in question and they are obviously not him.

Which songs? Which are the three in question?

rjm (And I agree with Colon Colin. How would it be proven by what they did?)

P.S. -- It was the fault of the touch keyboard on the Kindle! Sorry about that.

Last edited by rjm on Tue Jan 15, 2013 4:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

...(And I agree with Colon....)

And my half-brother - Semi-Colon agrees, too...............

The 3 songs are "Breaking News", "Keep Your Head Up", and "Monster". They broke into the server looking for the remaining 9 Cascio tracks, acapaella vocals of the tracks in question or anything else they could find pertaining to them. They did find the rest of the tracks and they have leaked in various forms. Still no "proof" though, other than the voice not sounding at all like Michael's and exactly like Jason Malachi's.

The 3 songs are "Breaking News", "Keep Your Head Up", and "Monster". They broke into the server looking for the remaining 9 Cascio tracks, acapaella vocals of the tracks in question or anything else they could find pertaining to them. They did find the rest of the tracks and they have leaked in various forms. Still no "proof" though, other than the voice not sounding at all like Michael's and exactly like Jason Malachi's.

Ah - yes, I see now.

They hoped that hearing the other 9 tracks might throw some light on the identity of the singer.

Doesn't seem like it was Jacko singing then.

The 3 songs are "Breaking News", "Keep Your Head Up", and "Monster". They broke into the server looking for the remaining 9 Cascio tracks, acapaella vocals of the tracks in question or anything else they could find pertaining to them. They did find the rest of the tracks and they have leaked in various forms. Still no "proof" though, other than the voice not sounding at all like Michael's and exactly like Jason Malachi's.

Thanks. I'll have a listen. I hadn't heard about it, and those weren't particular favorites. I was mostly stoked about finally getting his version of "Behind The Mask," which was worth the price of admission. I had both Phillinganes' version and Clapton's, but yearned for the original. But, even so, how could Sony do something so stupid? (The Cascios' history is checkered and convoluted, to say the least. So, it should have been treated with caution.)

(UPDATE: Listening, I can hear some givaways, but I never would have thought it if I didn't know. Has anyone run a voice-print analysis? That would do it.)

If there were any other artists in their stash of material, I wonder who and what was being stored on that server. And if they'll change that policy.

I do agree that if their motive was not profiteering, then the light sentence was appropriate. (Everyone must know about the young man who created Reddit, who was charged with serious felonies for acquiring MIT documents, with the notion that he "intended" to illegally distribute them. He just killed himself at 26 years old. He was, quite rightly, a 'net folk hero, and now a martyr for "information should be free." Especially of the sort he allegedly wanted to liberate.)

rjm
P.S. -- Just scrolled up; I apologize, Colin. I was on the Paperwhite, and it's hard to type. The "o" and the "i" are close together, and they often get mixed up like that. It wasn't intentional; I know your name! (Does anyone have any idea how hard it is to type on a Kindle Paperwhite touchscreen keyboard?? Only happens in the wee hours. I don't keep my phone there, or I'd never get to sleep! Besides, I also read in the midst of FECC'ing.)

There was a statement issued by the estate of Michael Jackson immediately after the controversy first kicked up saying that they had the voice tested and it came up as MJ, but there was no other information given about what exactly they tested, or who was doing the testing or any other specifics of results. If they did do tests, they surely didn't test them against the voice of Jason Malachi. They also gave names of people who listened to the songs in a meeting and said that they believed the songs were Michael. Although others in the meeting have come forward to say that there was more doubt expressed than the statement was letting on. Basically the statement was damage control after a crisis meeting at Sony.

The songs themselves contain cut and pastes of old authentic MJ ad-libs that were pasted into the songs before they were delivered to Sony. MJ is nowhere else to be found on any of the songs other than those ad-libs pasted from old songs.

I have no idea how they were stupid enough to let these songs go through. The Jackson family tried to put a stop to it to no avail and fans did the same after "Breaking News" was streamed a few weeks before the album was released. The full truth of what really happened is not yet known, but if the truth ever comes out, it will be known as one of the biggest blunders from a record company in the history of popular music.

You can look up Jason Malachi on youtube. He is widely believed to be the singer on the tracks.

Thank God we have Ernst Jørgensen, he can't be fooled with fake Elvis recordings