A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
