An unarmed hacker was able to successfully steal a whole cache of Radiohead’s unreleased recordings two weeks ago. Thom Yorke, the band’s lead singer had a total of 18 MiniDisc recordings that were an hour long each, which was composed of music they made when they were working on the seminal 1997 album, OK Computer.
This hacker threatened the group members to release all of the recordings online if they didn’t end up paying a ransom totalling $150,000.
So, guess what the band members ended up doing?
Instead of succumbing to the wishes of the hacker and paying that ridiculous amount of money for stealing private property, the band just released all those recordings online themselves.
In their statement, Radiohead’s guitarist and keyboardist Jonny Greenwood described the 18 hours of stolen recording as only tangentially interesting. He said it was: “Never intended for public consumption (though some clips did reach the cassette in the OK Computer reissue). And very, very long. Not a phone download. Rainy out, isn’t it though?”
You can get all the recordings on the website Bandcamp for only £18 (about $23) and all of the proceeds they raise here will go to Extinction Rebellion – an activist organization that concentrates on fighting against man-made climate change, rapid loss of biodiversity, and “a mass extinction of our own making.”
The band has previously hosted a number of talks regarding climate change in different local communities all over Britain. They have also helped push for mass mobilization and participated in public demonstrations, like that time when climate change activists chained themselves on a boat while it was being hauled into central London.
Peace of important advice, hackers. The next time you make musicians your target, maybe try to get something more embarrassing or private from them, rather than unreleased studio recordings so they don’t turn it around and make it a wonderful opportunity to use this situation to raise awareness and support worthy causes.
