I am uncomfortable with the idea that something that is allowed if you pay humans is also illegal if you use bots. That feels like it deserves more discussion. And it feels like while there is a clear crime here, it’s also a problem that the ad and streaming industry have a model that reduces one stream to one human. I don’t want to worry about jail time for automating tasks with bots and accidentally falling on the wrong side of some industry’s really bad/dated monetization model and having it look like fraud. That isn’t the case here, but it encroaches.
To reiterate, this would also be a crime if humans were paid, although it would be easier to defend in court because it CAN be argued that the ad placement was delivered, whereas with bots it CANNOT be argued that the ads were placed.
However prosecution CAN argue if humans are paid, that this is fraud, and just replacing bots with humans in this case wouldn't materially change the legal facts, it would maybe make less economical sense, and give plausible deniability, but the objective was to defraud, to obtain money without providing the agreed upon services.
For example if the perpetrator had hired people from the philippines to make 50 accounts each, and used a proxy network to fake their locations so they effectively WATCH ads more than once and from locations that were clearly not corresponding to the intent, then those facts would bring the case closer to the the fraud that occured with bots.
It would definitely be harder to argue, but it could still be fraud, but it's a hypothetical that I'm not sure why is being brought, I feel it detracts, but definitely the fact that humans were involved hypothetically wouldn't automatically make this not fraud.
I'm curious, which is why I brought it up. In my worldview humans should have a right not to be advertised to and all advertising should require consent. Even today, humans can ignore and block ads without committing ad fraud. So I don't see a difference between humans and bots consuming ad-laced content. --because no guarantees can be made as to wether an ad will be "consumed" or not, only show
Since I don't distinguish a difference, I wanted to discuss whether the case at any level hinged on the bot factor. That's all.
What I do value is the ability for institutions to control who uses their space/services. So I support regulating and punishing inappropriate use/access. In this case that would be bot usage of Spotify in ways that breaks the contract you agreed upon when you signed up to use their service.
But there's a difference between "this person committed fraud and it's criminally bad because something was fraudulently obtained from advertisers", and "this person breached their contract with spotify and possibly committed criminal computer abuse etc". So it's semantics around who is being defrauded.
I think I said this already, but in the cases of contracts and breach, it's a matter of perspective to interpret whether the gains being defrauded are gaining the consideration of the victim, or in keeping the consideration of the perpetrator, and what you are doing is taking the most charitable of the interpretations, when I think it's very obvious that of both interpretations, the most damaging should be considered.
Example, a rare baseball card is sold for 50M dollars, the 50M dollars are never wired, you would argue that it's just a stupid baseball card, when I think we should consider that 5M were stolen. The inverse scenario would be the same thing, if the 50M are wired, but the perpetrator keeps the baseball card, you would argue that it's just a baseball card, but I would say that it's fraud for 50M.
Market value is often considered, in which case it depends on third party estimations as for the true value of the thing. Which in the case of the streaming service, I don't think there's an overpricing here at all. 80M fake plays at 8M USD is like 10 cents per ad, maybe you can argue that it really was 1 cent per ad and the sentence should be lower at 800k? But it's a very weak position to argue on subjective grounds that the asset being traded is morally not something that people should be going to jail for. It would require every trial to judge not only the contract and the facts of the case but what the object of the contract was and whether it is 'serious' enough, effectively carving out some assets as 'serious' like food and oil, while others are unserious and subject to fraud, like music and software. You are effectively arguing against our trade in a way by devaluing intangible assets whose value and contracts we rely on to make a living.