An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
