A judge has granted Ariana Grande fast-track subpoena power to identify hackers who allegedly stole her unreleased music.
Grande’s legal team persuaded the Los Angeles court that speed was crucial to identifying those who are suspected of stealing music, photos and videos, and selling the material on the dark web for “significant sums of money”.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark H Epstein ruled on Wednesday that because the Petal singer has no way to identify the alleged hackers, she doesn’t have to comply with a waiting period that usually provides notice to defendants.
“The 20-day waiting period will never run because plaintiff cannot, even with reasonable diligence, determine the defendant’s identity without this discovery, and therefore will never be able to serve defendants,” the judge wrote in his order obtained by Rolling Stone.
In her application for expedited discovery, which is tied to her recently filed invasion of privacy lawsuit, Grande says she needed to accelerate her legal lawsuit because if she doesn’t quickly identify perpetrators “hiding behind anonymous accounts across various platforms”, the “hacking, theft, dissemination, sales and publication of content will continue”.
She argues that any delay means “the account, subscriber, and login data needed to identify defendants will be lost”.
Grande claims that in 2023 alone, 45 unreleased songs she was working on were stolen and leaked.
