An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote 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 streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
