An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors 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 government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
