A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing 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”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development 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 pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
