An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired 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 listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
