i wish there was a bit more information to this story... what exactly has been hacked or stolen? have they just downloaded master copies of his back catalogue (along with some unreleased tunes)? in which case, how is this really any different from people illegally sharing or torrenting his back catalogue? or is it that they've stolen copies of multitracks? and what format would these even be in? i can't imagine they would have master copies stored simply as mp3's?
i wish there was a bit more information to this story... what exactly has been hacked or stolen? have they just downloaded master copies of his back catalogue (along with some unreleased tunes)? in which case, how is this really any different from people illegally sharing or torrenting his back catalogue? or is it that they've stolen copies of multitracks? and what format would these even be in? i can't imagine they would have master copies stored simply as mp3's?
shit journalism.
It seems pretty specific to me:
"Hackers have stolen the entirety of Michael Jackson's catalog, according to a report in Britain's Sunday Times.
It's a collection worth over $250 million dollars -- the amount Sony executives paid for the rights to the 50,000 or so song files in 2010."
So, if this is to be believed, it's not mp3s and not just his back catalog of released material, but basically everything he recorded after Motown. The real question is why this material would be on a server accessible to the internet.
How much will Sony pay to keep that shit off of the internet??
Nuts
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
Anyone care to explain how it's possible to "hack" a vault full of hundreds of reels of 16/24/48/64-track 2" masters? Take as much time as you like.
I seriously doubt this is anything more than some script kiddie finding his way into a shared drive on a Sony network somewhere that had a folder full of Michael Jackson mp3s, and he now thinks he's "stolen" the entire catalog.
Anyone care to explain how it's possible to "hack" a vault full of hundreds of reels of 16/24/48/64-track 2" masters? Take as much time as you like.
I seriously doubt this is anything more than some script kiddie finding his way into a shared drive on a Sony network somewhere that had a folder full of Michael Jackson mp3s, and he now thinks he's "stolen" the entire catalog.
Not sure why this would take much time. They were backed up onto digital files - at least you would hope they would be after spending 250 million on them. And the extent of the breach is Sony's description, not the hackers.
Maybe Sony has a reason to make this up, but I don't know what it would be. Buyers remorse?
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
I don't think Sony are the ones making it up. The major DDoS attack they suffered at the hands of Anonymous last year is common knowledge, so it's well within the realms of possibility that a great deal of commercially sensitive data was accessed. No, it's the general air of know-nothing bullshit surrounding the story as it's been written that I find risible. So much of it has clearly taken place in the minds of a few journalists and nowhere else. "Michael Jackson's entire catalog was hacked" - not Tammy Wynette or Journey or any other Sony act, but the one-time jewel in the crown. Putting aside the minor point that Sony doesn't even own Michael Jackson's "entire catalog", we're expected to believe that everything ever recorded over the last thirty years by one of the biggest stars there's ever been was just sat there on an unsecured, unencrypted drive which, presumably, anyone connected to any part of Sony's network anywhere could easily gain access to. How lucky was that? Note also the prominent use of the buzzword "hacked", as if it was some minor-league celeb's Twitter account or Blackberry under discussion. Of course, claiming the actual masters themselves had been physically stolen might make for a far less sexy story, and might need something more substantial to convince the reader than the vague explanation on display here - "What, they hacked Michael Jackson's entire catalog?? B-but...how???!?" "Because, y'know...computers."
And what exactly are these "50,000 or so song files" (i.e., mp3s) anyway? Did Michael Jackson even record 50,000 songs (including out-takes, remixes, radio edits, etc) in his entire life? Or is this simply a case of a few hackers happening upon what they think is the motherlode, but is simply a shared mp3 archive of the Sony catalog consisting of "50,000 or so song files" - quite possibly including the odd unreleased MJ track - and which is the kind of thing you frequently do find on internal record company networks? That, I could believe. As for high-res digital backups of these unreleased masters, major labels generally don't keep shit like that on site anyway, least of all somewhere it can theoretically be accessed by anybody. After spending a quarter of a million bucks on it? In an age where anyone with an internet connection is a potential bootlegger? Are you serious?
I agree with what you said Doc but fwiw a DoS attack isn't hacking in the terms of illegally accessing another system. It's really just saturating the targets' server with so many requests it fails to provide its intended service.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
Okem said:
I agree with what you said Doc but fwiw a DoS attack isn't hacking in the terms of illegally accessing another system. It's really just saturating the targets' server with so many requests it fails to provide its intended service.
Aye, you're quite right, of course. Perhaps I should have qualified that by saying that it's conceivable their security might have been compromised as a result. Although not to the extent that you could effectively just waltz into their network and hoist a shitload of unreleased MJ songs as if you were downloading them from iTunes.
I agree with what you said Doc but fwiw a DoS attack isn't hacking in the terms of illegally accessing another system. It's really just saturating the targets' server with so many requests it fails to provide its intended service.
Aye, you're quite right, of course. Perhaps I should have qualified that by saying that it's conceivable their security might have been compromised as a result. Although not to the extent that you could effectively just waltz into their network and hoist a shitload of unreleased MJ songs as if you were downloading them from iTunes.
Such attacks are usually carried out by enthusiastic hacktivist types, which is what Anonymous seems to have become, rather than more skilled hackers like LulzSec. And as you say, it must take some skill waltz out with that much data unnoticed.
50,000 song files is a lot. If they're being kept for possible release I imagine they must be high bit-rate files not 192kbps mp3s. They're more likely to be wavs or something similar, so you could speculate they're around a couple of hundred mb per file. So we're talking somewhere in the region of 5 to 10 terabytes (5 or 10 million mb). Even if you've got an unimpeded 20mbps download speed that's still 3 days of constant downloading at least.
I think 50,000 tracks is around the number you'd find on the external hard drives that labels send to download sites.
This number is almost certainly an error. Even if it includes little snippets of false starts etc (which it probably does), it's still too high.
Also, not mentioned in the article, is the possibility of inside help.
But yeah, I retract my earlier defense, the article is pretty uninformative, but it's written for people who don't look at these things like we do.
I would point out that these tapes would almost certainly have been digitized shortly after being acquired. A lot of tape stock from the 80s/90s is notoriously shitty and degrades rapidly - leaving the music on these alone would be incredibly stupid. I have a friend who recorded a number of solo records for a major label form the late 70s - mid 80s. He told me that when the label went to issue them on CD in the late 90's/00's that the tapes were entirely unusable despite being stored in a climate controlled warehouse - they couldn't even be baked. The company had to (quietly) issue them from vinyl.
Very uninformative article, but if they're multi-track transfers or sessions, those numbers make way more sense. The article describes them as "song files", and since big productions can go well over a hundred tracks and thousands of takes and edits, thats a way more manageable number if they were session files recorded over a couple of decades.
"The Sony Music archive has been infiltrated by cyber-crooks, who have illegally downloaded more than 50,000 digital files."
So no, it's not 50K MJ files. It's 50K files, which happens to include MJ music.
Neither this nor the HP post should be confused with "journalism" regardless.
On a different note: I know people who work in music archival services and none of them would be remotely surprised this could happen. Labels have no fucking clue what they're doing with their vaults - whether physical or digital.
dreskieboogie
951 Posts
Comments
shit journalism.
It seems pretty specific to me:
"Hackers have stolen the entirety of Michael Jackson's catalog, according to a report in Britain's Sunday Times.
It's a collection worth over $250 million dollars -- the amount Sony executives paid for the rights to the 50,000 or so song files in 2010."
So, if this is to be believed, it's not mp3s and not just his back catalog of released material, but basically everything he recorded after Motown. The real question is why this material would be on a server accessible to the internet.
Nuts
I seriously doubt this is anything more than some script kiddie finding his way into a shared drive on a Sony network somewhere that had a folder full of Michael Jackson mp3s, and he now thinks he's "stolen" the entire catalog.
Not sure why this would take much time. They were backed up onto digital files - at least you would hope they would be after spending 250 million on them. And the extent of the breach is Sony's description, not the hackers.
Maybe Sony has a reason to make this up, but I don't know what it would be. Buyers remorse?
And what exactly are these "50,000 or so song files" (i.e., mp3s) anyway? Did Michael Jackson even record 50,000 songs (including out-takes, remixes, radio edits, etc) in his entire life? Or is this simply a case of a few hackers happening upon what they think is the motherlode, but is simply a shared mp3 archive of the Sony catalog consisting of "50,000 or so song files" - quite possibly including the odd unreleased MJ track - and which is the kind of thing you frequently do find on internal record company networks? That, I could believe. As for high-res digital backups of these unreleased masters, major labels generally don't keep shit like that on site anyway, least of all somewhere it can theoretically be accessed by anybody. After spending a quarter of a million bucks on it? In an age where anyone with an internet connection is a potential bootlegger? Are you serious?
Aye, you're quite right, of course. Perhaps I should have qualified that by saying that it's conceivable their security might have been compromised as a result. Although not to the extent that you could effectively just waltz into their network and hoist a shitload of unreleased MJ songs as if you were downloading them from iTunes.
50,000 song files is a lot. If they're being kept for possible release I imagine they must be high bit-rate files not 192kbps mp3s. They're more likely to be wavs or something similar, so you could speculate they're around a couple of hundred mb per file. So we're talking somewhere in the region of 5 to 10 terabytes (5 or 10 million mb). Even if you've got an unimpeded 20mbps download speed that's still 3 days of constant downloading at least.
It all seems a little unlikely.
This number is almost certainly an error. Even if it includes little snippets of false starts etc (which it probably does), it's still too high.
Also, not mentioned in the article, is the possibility of inside help.
But yeah, I retract my earlier defense, the article is pretty uninformative, but it's written for people who don't look at these things like we do.
I would point out that these tapes would almost certainly have been digitized shortly after being acquired. A lot of tape stock from the 80s/90s is notoriously shitty and degrades rapidly - leaving the music on these alone would be incredibly stupid. I have a friend who recorded a number of solo records for a major label form the late 70s - mid 80s. He told me that when the label went to issue them on CD in the late 90's/00's that the tapes were entirely unusable despite being stored in a climate controlled warehouse - they couldn't even be baked. The company had to (quietly) issue them from vinyl.
http://www.contactmusic.com/news/hackers-steal-michael-jacksons-unreleased-tracks_1300070
"The Sony Music archive has been infiltrated by cyber-crooks, who have illegally downloaded more than 50,000 digital files."
So no, it's not 50K MJ files. It's 50K files, which happens to include MJ music.
Neither this nor the HP post should be confused with "journalism" regardless.
On a different note: I know people who work in music archival services and none of them would be remotely surprised this could happen. Labels have no fucking clue what they're doing with their vaults - whether physical or digital.