An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
