A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally 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 “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law 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, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
