An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music 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.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
