An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish 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 employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, 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 repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
