An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
