A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music 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.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, 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 beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
