Background
Hacker Adrian Kwiatkowski, 23, from Ipswich, has been jailed for 18 months for copying famous singer Ed Sheeran’s unreleased music and selling them for cryptocurrency. Kwiatkowski hacked Ed Sheeran’s cloud-based account and sold his songs on the ‘dark web’. He made £131,000 from selling the unreleased music according to the City of London Police. He pleaded guilty to 19 charges including copyright infringement and possessing criminal property.
Ipswich Crown Court heard that when Kwiatkowski’s laptop was searched, it contained over 565 audio files including songs by Sheeran and many other well-known rappers.
Investigation
The initial investigation was launched by US authorities in 2019. The investigation resulted from several reports from musician managers that someone known online as ‘Spirdark’ had hacked their accounts and was selling their content. The investigation linked the email address which was used to set up Spirdark’s crypto account to Adrian Kwiatkowski. Additionally, his home address in the UK was connected to an IP address used to hack one of the music accounts.
The case was after referred to the City of London Police and Kwiatkowski was arrested in September 2019. According to the Police several devices which involved a hard drive that included 1263 unreleased songs by 89 different musicians were seized. One document found in the hard drive briefed the method in which Kwiatkowski used to steal music along with a large sum of Bitcoin.
Decision
The Crown Prosecution explained that Kwiatkowski selfishly stole artists music to make money for himself. Kwiatkowski pleaded guilty at Ipswich Magistrates Court to 3 charges of unauthorised access to computer hardware, 14 charges of selling copyrighted works, 1 charge for converting criminal property and 2 charges of possession of criminal property. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
By Zohaib Tahir, an LLM student at Solent University
