A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users 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 great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology 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 regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
