An activist group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio acquired 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“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 said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding 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.
