A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Observers noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
