A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, 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 tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service 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, 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 ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting 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.
