A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data 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 frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company 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 “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
