On September 12, 2007, the music pirate group Rabid Neurosis, or RNS, started unraveling with an FBI raid on 35-year-old Bennie Lydell “Dell” Glover, of Shelby, North Carolina. They weren’t the first MP3 pirate group, but they were one of the most prolific. Nearly two years later, on September 9, 2009, four members were indicted with conspiracy to commit copyright infringement.
Why was the FBI raiding MP3 pirates?
FBI raids against people who break copyright law weren’t exactly new in 2007. Various government agencies had raided software pirates in previous decades. The question was whose responsibility it was to conduct such raids.
And I’m old enough to remember the FBI warning at the start of VHS tapes. I’m not sure anyone I knew took it seriously, and I never heard of someone casually making copies of VHS tapes getting raided.
But if operated on a large scale and you enabled a large enough number of other people to copy, you got the FBI’s attention. And that’s why the members of Rabid Neurosis found themselves recipients of FBI anti-piracy raids.
What was Rabid Neurosis?
According to the indictment, RNS started no earlier than 1999 and operated until 2007.
Rabid Neurosis was an early release group, posting music for download before its official release date. Glover worked in a CD manufacturing plant in North Carolina, which gave him access to pre-release music. Two other members would sometimes purchase CDs right after their commercial release, ripping and posting them.
Glover’s revelation
Glover first started at the plant in North Carolina in 1994 as a temporary worker. He attended a party in 1994 hoping to network his way into a permanent position. But he noticed he’d never heard any of the music at the party, even though he recognized the artists. He realized the host was playing pre-release music that had been smuggled out of the plant.
Glover was a computer enthusiast, an early adopter of not only the Internet, but he also bought a CD burner early, when they still cost over $600.
By 1996, Glover had a full time job at the CD plant, allowing him better pay and the ability to work overtime, which allowed him to buy high-speed satellite Internet access as soon as it became available to consumers. From there he discovered IRC, where he found the pirate scene. He first visited an MP3 trading channel soon after CDA’s release of the first pirate MP3, Metallica’s “Until It Sleeps,” ripped by Netfrack.
In 1998, Universal Music Group merged with Polygram, which changed Glover’s situation. Under Polygram ownership, the plant where Glover worked mostly pressed mainstream, adult-contemporary artists like Bryan Adams. With Universal in the picture, the plant expanded, and so did the selection of music the plant manufactured. Universal brought rap music into the picture. Needless to say, there was more interest in pirating Jay Z and Dr. Dre than Bryan Adams.
How Glover became an MP3 pirate
A coworker introduced Glover to other members of RNS. RNS had sources at every music label, and this coworker was one of them. But the coworker had too much other stuff going on, so he proposed Glover take his place.
Smuggling discs out of the plant was intentionally difficult. But in North Carolina, oversized belt buckles were common. The belt buckles set off metal detecting wands security used, but nobody ever asked anyone to take off the belt buckle. Glover learned to hide CDs behind his belt buckle and play it cool with the guards. And then he trained other employees to do it, and hand the discs off to him well outside the plant, at gas station and convenience store parking lots. A promotion allowed Glover to schedule one of his sources on the packaging line of any major upcoming release.
Glover didn’t smuggle the discs out and he didn’t distribute the MP3s. His job was to rip the MP3s and upload them, and the other members took care of the rest.
His motive
Glover’s motive was simple. He was selling bootleg content on the side. Working on his own, he could make $1,500 a week in cash. But he expanded into a network, allowing him to make considerably more. Being a member of RNS gave him access to content rival bootleggers couldn’t get. And he set up a video on demand service for $20 a month, in effect running a private Netflix from his home.
But his interest waned, and other pirates were getting busted by law enforcement. In January 2007, he and the other members of RNS retired. But the retirement was short-lived, and turned into a slowdown at best.
In August 2007, Glover leaked the new albums from Kanye West and 50 Cent. On September 12, the day after the official release of the two albums, the FBI raided Glover and seized his computer equipment as evidence. And over the next few months, they caught some of his cohorts in RNS.
In September 2009, Glover pleaded guilty. He also made an agreement to testify against another member of RNS–who was acquitted. Glover served 3 months in prison, as did another member of the group. Yet another member was acquitted.
Dell Glover: Music industry fall guy
In a story published April 20, 2015, The New Yorker called Glover “the man who broke the music business.” I understand why. The title like that gets clicks. But I don’t think you can say Glover alone broke the music business. He didn’t invent MP3s, didn’t write the software, and wasn’t the first to pirate MP3s. If it hadn’t been him gamma the scene would have found someone else on the inside to do what Glover did. But it is incredibly difficult to get information on pirates. Since Glover was the rare pirate who was caught, stood trial, and pleaded guilty, there’s a lot of information about him, enough to write a longform story about him. So that’s why he got the headline.
But I can’t help but think that’s turning Glover into a fall guy. I think the music industry broke itself, by punishing people like Glover with too heavy of a hand, suing 12-year-olds, and trying to prevent commercialization of digital music by litigating against MP3 players and MP3.com’s music service.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.