An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research 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 government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
