A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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 asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
