An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could aid AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting 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.
