Smooth criminals nab Jacko\'s back catalogue from Sony. Shamone!

Michael Jackson's entire back catalogue, including unreleased material, was stolen from Sony in a fresh breach.

According to media reports, the Sony Music archive was hacked with greater than 50,000 digital files downloaded.

According to the Guardian, two men were charged on Friday for offences in reference to the alleged security breach. James Marks, 26, from Daventry in Northamptonshire, and James McCormick, 25, from Blackpool, denied charges under the pc Misuse Act and the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act at Leicester Crown Court. They were arrested last May and are by reason of stand trial next January.

The Daily Mail claimed the hacking occurred shortly after the attack at the PlayStation Network last year, but was not discovered until after routine monitoring of social networking sites, Jackson fan sites and hacking forums.

It also claimed that the hack has compromised the work of different artists managed by the firm, including songs by Jimi Hendrix, Paul Simon, Olly Murs, Foo Fighters and Avril Lavigne.

Jackson's back catalogue was bought by Sony in 2010 for $250m (£164m), giving the corporate the rights to sell his catalogue in addition previously unreleased tracks.

A source told The Sunday Times that "everything Sony purchased from the Michael Jackson estate was compromised".

“It caused them to test their systems they usually found the breach. There has been some extent of class. Sony identified the weakness and plugged the space.”

Asked if he felt whether this was a case of over-exuberant fans searching out Jackson's material, or hackers trying to exploit the IP of an organization that have been penetrated before, Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs, told SC Magazine that it was probably the latter.

“We all remember how they were hacked and the very poor security features that they had in place. So it feels like Sony may be a simple target; in the event that they could get that information then probably that is not it all, unless Sony had [Jackson's material] on an isolated server, so lets expect more news coming,” he said.