An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify 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 copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
