A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio 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 claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
