A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
