A few young Germans have the world's biggest record companies at their knees. After hacking into the computers of famous recording artists and their managers, they have placed unreleased songs by the likes of Lady Gaga and Shakira on the Internet. Two have been caught, but the others are still at work.
It's 9 a.m. in the western German city of Wesel, where Christian M. is still in bed, dozing in his room in the basement. It's a morning like every other, when getting out of bed doesn't seem worth the effort. There isn't anyone waiting for him in the outside world, where no one is interested in a young man who dropped out of vocational school and, at 22, is now unemployed and spends hours in front of his computer.

No one.

Except Lady Gaga, Mariah Carey and Leona Lewis, that is. It's August 26, 2010, in a residential area of red-brick duplexes in this city on the lower Rhine River, when the basement door opens and in bursts Lady Gaga, together with Mariah Carey and Leona Lewis. Actually, it's the police who are now standing in front of his bed, after Christian's sister let them into the house. Christian blinks as an officer shines a flashlight into his face. Then a male voice says: "You know why we're here."

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