An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated 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 streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes 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 AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-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 science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
