An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, 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 government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
