People Are (Finally) Going To Jail For Leaking Music

Copyright theft has been a crime for a very long time, but its enforcement in the digital age is increasingly rare. Services like Haulix exist to not only help artists and labels protect their releases, but also to aide in the battle against piracy. We have many state-of-the-art tools to help our clients in the war against digital thieves, but unfortunately not every artist and label can claim they have Haulix fighting on their side. Some have no measures to battle piracy in place at all, and as a result there are numerous albums that still find their way to public ahead of their scheduled release date. Now, for the first time practically ever, someone is making sure one pirate never gets the itch to leak music again.

Late last year, songs from Madonna’s latest album were unceremoniously leaked before the album itself was even announced. Madonna swore she would find the person responsible, and with a little help from the FBI, as well as Israeli Police forces, she did just that. According to Consequence Of Sound, Ari Lederman of Tel Aviv was arrested for, and found guilty of computer trespassing, copyright infringement, prohibited secret monitoring, and obstructing investigation. Court documents obtained by The Hollywood Reporter claim Lederman had hacked into the cloud accounts of several associates of Madonna as well as her manager, and had in fact previously stolen a song from Madonna in 2012, which he sold rather than leaking himself.

For all of this, Lederman was sentenced to 14 months in prison. He’s also been fined NIS 15,000 (which equates to $4,000 US).

As far as we know this is the first time in a long while that someone has been sentenced to prison for pirating music. Though this specific instance involves the theft of an unannounced release, it’s not impossible to imagine a world where people who leak albums even a few weeks before its release could face real world penalties for their online crimes. Comment below and let us know your thoughts on this story.

James Shotwell