An activist group has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting 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.
