A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital 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 information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
