An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
