An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform 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 catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken 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 audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
