An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
