An activist organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
