An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
