A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies searching 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 metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
