Naman Shrestha
Based on ‘How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy’ by Stephen Richard Witt, ‘Paramount+’s ‘How Music Got Free’ is a documentary that recounts the history of illegal online MP3 sharing and how Dell Glover was right at the heart of it all. The documentary is narrated by Method Man and includes interviews with many famous faces in the music biz, including Eminem, Timbaland, 50 Cent, and many more. But most of all, it focuses on the man who revolutionized the music industry by providing free music online — Dell Glover.
Dell Glover Shook the Music Industry by Providing it For Free Online
Born in 1974, Bennie Lydell “Dell” Glover was raised in a loving household with the support of his parents. Since childhood, he has been a technical genius. But he demonstrated his talent for the first time at the age of 15 when he purchased his first computer from Sears in 1989. It was a $2,300 computer system with a one-color monitor. As he spent enough time with the machine, he inevitably gained a lot of knowledge and expertise in its hardware aspects, so much so that he began fixing the computers of his friends and neighbors for money.
After graduating from Crest High School in the small town of Shelby in North Carolina, just a few years later, in 1994, he bagged a job as a temporary employee at the PolyGram compact disk (CD) manufacturing plant in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. In the same year, he also bought his first CD burner. Little did anybody know that his entry into this industry would revolutionize the music industry. From his early days in the plant, he started smuggling a few disks out of the factory, mainly of movies and video games. In a couple of years, Dell was a permanent employee at the plant, earning a higher salary and various other benefits, and was more prone to working overtime.
By 1998, he owned a total of seven CD burners, which he used to sell games, applications, MP3 files, and anything that could be burned to a disc. Moreover, since he got his hands on several popular album discs before their official release dates, Dell decided to make the most of his position and went on to collaborate with Rabid Neurosis (RNS), an MP3 warez release organization. Over the following years, Dell, also known as Adeg, went on to leak almost 2,000 albums of artists such as Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Kanye West, 50-Cent, and Jay-Z. Through their piracy and the MP3 revolution, Dell and RNS cost the music industry millions of dollars between 2001 and 2007.
However, in 2006, he and several other members of RNS contemplated quitting their ties with the organization. Just a year later, one of the servers of RNS went through a technical issue that unexpectedly made it go offline. After this unfortunate incident, on January 19, 2007, the MP3 release organization disbanded, with its last leak being Fall Out Boy’s ‘Infinity on High.’ Despite quitting RNS, Dell could not bid farewell to leaking MP3s permanently as in just a matter of a few months, he started working with another group.
When the authorities learned that Dell Glover played a significant role in the piracy of music, they tracked him down and waited beside his truck right outside his work in late 2007. Not only did the FBI arrest him and take him into custody in September 2009, but they also raided his house to search for any key piece of evidence. The FBI agents confiscated his duplicating towers, his computers, his hard drives, and other electronic items. He was charged with conspiracy to infringe copyright by illegally obtaining and releasing copyrighted music. Alongside him, the leader of RNS, Adil R. Cassim, AKA Kali, was also scheduled to sit on trial in 2010.
Dell Glover is a Cherryville Resident Today
In October 2009, Dell Glover pleaded guilty to the charge against him and agreed to testify against Kali. During the trial for Kali in March 2010, Dell testified, along with other members of RNS and numerous FBI agents. When the jury found Kali not guilty of the charges against him, despite the testimonies from various witnesses, Dell regretted his decision to testify and contemplated that he could have been acquitted like his ex-colleague had he hired a better defense lawyer. So, he ended up serving three months in federal prison.
After serving his sentence, Dell reportedly worked as a supervisor at Daimler Trucks of North America in Shelby, North Carolina. In 2010, he joined Belmont Abbey College to complete his higher education. Meanwhile, he also landed a job at Freightliner as an Assembly Supervisor. Currently residing in Cherryville, North Carolina, Dell seems to be a regular in the gym as he focuses on his physical health. He frequently travels and likes to share images on social media quite regularly.
Read More: Todd Shaffer: Former RNS Member is Working at Amazon Today
