A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
