An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data 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 purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
