An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
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.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely 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 training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
