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Hacker stole unreleased Coldplay and Rexha tracks

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A cyber hacker has pleaded guilty to stealing unreleased music from artists including Coldplay, Canadian singer Shawn Mendes and US singer Bebe Rexha.

Skylar Dalziel made about £42,000 by selling the tracks online, according to City of London Police.

Prosecutor Richard Partridge said she “selfishly used their music to make money for herself by selling it on the dark web”.

The 22-year-old, of Winchester Gardens in Luton, admitted 11 copyright offences at Luton Crown Court and was sentenced to 21 months imprisonment, suspended for 24 months.

Det Con Daryl Fryatt, from the force’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, said: “Stealing copyrighted material for your own financial gain is illegal.

“It jeopardises the work of artists and the livelihoods of the people who work with them to create and release their music.”

Dalziel got hold of the music by illegally accessing cloud storage accounts linked to the artists.

The thefts came to light when Sony Music Entertainment discovered a cloud account owned by Upsahl had been compromised and reported it to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in June 2021.

Forty unreleased tracks had been extracted and were being sold online, police said.

The IFPI and the Recording Industry Association of America identified an account on an online forum selling unreleased music from various artists and that account was linked to Dalziel.

Officers said they arrested Dalziel on 9 January 2023 and seized three drives which contained 291,941 music tracks.

They also found a spreadsheet which showed she had sold tracks to customers and her PayPal and bank accounts revealed she had received £42,049 from April 2021 to January 2023.

Some of this money was transferred to bank accounts in the US and City of London Police said it was working with Homeland Security Investigations to identify the people linked to the accounts.

Dalziel pleaded guilty to 11 counts of making for sale an article without licence of the copyright’s owner, one count of transferring criminal property and three counts of acquiring/using/possessing criminal property.

She was also sentenced to 180 hours of unpaid work.

Det Con Fryatt said the sentencing “sends a clear message that we have the ability and tools to locate cyber criminals and hold them to account for their actions”.

(BBC News)

Entertainment

Connie Francis: Pretty Little Baby singer dies at 87

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Connie Francis, who was at one time the world’s biggest-selling female artist, has died at the age of 87.

The musician, whose hits included Stupid Cupid and Who’s Sorry Now, had recently enjoyed a resurgence after her 1962 song Pretty Little Baby went viral on TikTok.

Francis had recently been treated for pelvic pain caused by a fracture. During her stay in hospital, she was diagnosed with pneumonia and died on Wednesday night, the president of her record label, Ron Roberts, told BBC News.

Roberts had previously announced the star’s death on Facebook, “with a heavy heart and extreme sadness.”

“I know that Connie would approve that her fans are among the first to learn of this sad news,” he added.

The star’s death comes just months after Pretty Little Baby became a trending song on TikTok.

Millions of people, including Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, lip-synced to the easy listening ballad, while showing off their children and pets, or making displays of affection.

One video, by social media influencers Brooke Monk and Sam Dezz, was watched more than 158 million times.

ABBA singer Agnetha Fältskog also posted the song, saying that Francis had long been her favourite singer. And the actress Gracie Lawrence, who is currently playing Francis in the Broadway musical Just in Time, also shared a video of herself singing the track, while dressed in character.

Speaking last month, Francis said she had been surprised by the sudden success of a track that had originally been a b-side.

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t even remember the song!” she told People magazine.

“I had to listen to it to remember. To think that a song I recorded 63 years ago is touching the hearts of millions of people is truly awesome. It is an amazing feeling.”

Francis was born Concetta Rosemarie Franconero and grew up in a working-class Italian American family in Brooklyn, New York.

Encouraged by her father, she started playing the accordion at the age of three. By the time she was a teenager, she had changed her name to Connie Francis, and was making regular appearances on the US TV variety show Startime Kids.

Early attempts to launch a singing career were not successful.

She was turned down by almost every record label, only securing a contract with MGM Records because her demo song was called Freddy – which happened to be the name of the president’s son.

Her initial recordings failed to find an audience, and Francis accepted a place to study medicine at university.

But she scored a breakout hit with her last contracted recording for MGM – a cover of the 1923 song Who’s Sorry Now?, that she only recorded at her father’s insistence.

“I had 18 bomb records,” Francis told UPI in 1996. “He wanted me to record a song written in 1923. I said ‘Forget about it – the kids on American Bandstand would laugh me right off the show.’

“He said, ‘If you don’t record this song, dummy, the only way you’ll get on American Bandstand is to sit on the TV’.”

It was almost prophetic. In 1958, Dick Clark championed the track on American Bandstand, telling viewers: “There’s no doubt about it, she is headed straight for the number one spot.”

Francis, who was watching at home, had no idea the song was going to feature on the show.

“Well, the feeling was cosmic – just cosmic!” she wrote in her diary that night.

Over the next couple of years, Francis became a true pop icon.

She sold millions of records – including teen hits like Lipstick On Your Collar and Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.

In 1960, she became the first woman to top the Billboard Top 100, with the bluesy ballad Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.

Francis also had an affinity for languages, and was one of the first stars to record in multiple dialects.

Her title song from the 1961 movie Where the Boys Are, for example, was released in seven different languages – English, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Neopolitan and Spanish.

In 1963, she also recorded one of the first known charity singles, In The Summer Of His Years, a tribute to the assassinated US president John F Kennedy.

Her popularity waned in the mid-60s, as acts like The Beatles and Bob Dylan took over the pop charts; and she briefly lost her voice as a result of nasal surgery.

(BBC News)

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Netflix boss says AI effects used in show for first time

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Netflix says it has used visual effects created by generative artificial intelligence (AI) on screen for the first time in one of its original TV shows.The streaming giant’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos said AI, which produces videos and images based on prompts, was used to create a scene of a building collapsing in the Argentine science fiction show, The Eternauts.

He praised the technology as an “incredible opportunity to help creators make films and series better, not just cheaper.”

The use of generative AI is controversial in the entertainment industry and has sparked fears that it will replace the work of humans.

The comments came after the company unveiled revenue of $11.08bn (£8.25bn) for the three months to the end of June,16% higher than the same time last year.

Netflix said the better-than-expected performance was boosted by the success of the third and final series of South Korean thriller Squid Game, which has so far attracted 122 million views.

Asked about Netflix’s use of AI, Mr Sarandos said the technology has allowed productions with smaller budgets to use advanced visual effects.

The generative AI used in The Eternauts helped its production team to complete a sequence 10 times faster than if they had used traditional special effects tools, he said.

“The cost of it would just wouldn’t have been feasible for a show in that budget.”

“That sequence actually is the very first [generative] AI final footage to appear on screen in a Netflix original series or film. So the creators were thrilled with the result,” said Mr Sarandos.

AI was among the key concerns raised during a Hollywood strike in 2023.

During the three-month walkout, the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union called for tighter regulation of the use of AI.

(BBC News)

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SRK cancels visit to SL

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Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, who was scheduled to perform at the launch of City of Dreams Sri Lanka later this year, will not attend the event, reports say.

A statement by the organisers notes, “unfortunately due to unforeseen personal reasons beyond his control, Mr. Khan is no longer able to attend.”

“The launch event will continue as a landmark celebration, featuring an extraordinary lineup of local and international talent to be unveiled in the coming days. We are committed to making this moment a defining milestone in Sri Lanka’s journey to becoming a globally recognised destination for world-class entertainment,” the statement adds.

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