An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told 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.
