An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing 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 shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding 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.
