An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development 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.
