A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
