A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging 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 frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting 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.
