An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive 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 wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
