Michael Jackson’s New Album “Michael” Leaks to BitTorrent

[Archiee]

Debuts on BitTorrent tracker sites everywhere well ahead of its official December 14th release date.
Following in a long line of other hotly anticipated albums, Michael Jackson’s new album “Michael” has leaked to BitTorrent tracker sites everywhere more than a week before its official December 14th release date.

The leak means that all ten tracks from “Michael” are now available and not just the snippets that Sony has been releasing piecemeal to spur interest in the album.

The leak is unlikely to cause any tangible decline in sales, but will surely play into the hands of copyright holders looking to convince Congress to pass the “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” which would give the Justice Dept an expedited process for tracking and seizing domain names of sites “devoted to providing access to unauthorized downloads, streaming or sale of copyrighted content and counterfeit goods.”

No artist has been spared having an album leak to file-sharing sites, and MJ is merely following in the footsteps of artists like Eminem, Broken Bells, Kings of Leon, MGMT, U2, the list goes on and on. Interestingly enough, in the case of U2 the band decided to respond to the leak by offer free streaming of its album “No Line On The Horizon” on MySpace.

There’s no word on how Sony plans to respond to news of the leak, but I’m sure it isn’t very happy. It might want to take a look at last Billboard’s list of “Five Easy Steps to Plug Online Music Leaks.”

Stay tuned.