A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear 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.
