An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly 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 members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
