What the Copyright Office Is Investigating and Why It Matters Now
Docket No. 2026-6 was filed by the US Copyright Office on October 7, 2026, at the formal request of Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI-5th), a member of the House Judiciary Committee. The inquiry asks 10 sets of questions covering how streaming fraud schemes operate, what they cost, how AI-generated content feeds them, and what legislative or regulatory tools Congress could use to address them. The scope is broad: bot farms, click farms, playlist stuffing, account hijacking, and AI-generated music used to generate artificial play counts are all named categories. The inquiry also asks distributors and platforms specifically whether royalties clawed back from fraud accounts are returned to the legitimate artists whose royalty pool was diluted.
The timing follows a high-profile criminal conviction. On October 6, 2026 - one day before the inquiry opened - Michael Smith, 54, of Cornelius, North Carolina, was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison and ordered to forfeit $8,091,843.64 for operating a large-scale music streaming fraud scheme. Smith had used AI-generated music and bot farms to generate fake streams, funneling royalty payments to himself. His case made the scale of the problem impossible to dismiss: this is not a fringe issue, and the money it involves runs into the millions.
The Real Cost: Every Fake Stream Takes Money Out of a Real Artist's Pocket
The streaming royalty pool does not work the way most people outside the industry assume. Spotify and Apple Music do not pay a fixed per-stream rate - they divide a total pool of revenue by total streams. When bot farms generate millions of fake plays for AI-generated content, they dilute that pool, reducing the per-stream payout for every legitimate track. A human artist with 10,000 real plays in a month where bots ran 10 million fake plays earns less per stream than they would have earned without the fraud. This is not a hypothetical - it is the financial mechanism that Michael Smith exploited for $8 million before the FBI stopped him.
The inquiry specifically asks whether platforms and distributors are returning clawed-back royalties to the legitimate artists whose pools were diluted, rather than keeping them as platform revenue. That question has no confirmed public answer yet. Independent artists who have never filed a comment with a federal agency can do so here - the process is free, requires no legal representation, and the Copyright Office accepts written submissions directly. Atlanta's independent artists have a real stake in this inquiry, and their voices count as part of the official record.
How to Submit Your Comments and Where to Find a Royalty Stream That Bots Can't Touch
To submit comments, visit the Copyright Office's Music Streaming Fraud policy page at copyright.gov/policy/music-streaming-fraud/ and follow the filing instructions for Docket No. 2026-6. Initial comments must be received by November 23, 2026, at 11:59 PM ET. Reply comments - responding to what others filed - are due December 21, 2026, at 11:59 PM ET. You do not need a lawyer. You can describe your experience as an independent artist, the impact of streaming fraud on your royalties, and what you believe platforms and distributors should be required to do. This inquiry does not create new licensing requirements or change any existing streaming contracts - it is a fact-finding and rulemaking process, and artist input shapes its findings.
While the Copyright Office works through its inquiry, radio performance royalties remain a separate, verified revenue stream that AI slop and bot farms cannot dilute. Di-VerZe HitZ Radio streams 24/7 free on web, iOS, and Android with Atlanta hip-hop and R&B, and listeners can request songs directly. Submit your music free - include your ISRC code and every spin on a licensed station generates real performance royalties paid through a verified performance rights organization, outside the streaming royalty pool entirely. Every spin counts, every royalty is real, and no bot can touch it.