An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told 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.
