An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks 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 full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
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 used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
