An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing 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 reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed 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.
