An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio taken 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“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 makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
