A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music 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 digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, 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.
