A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated 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 streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data 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 describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
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 develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
