An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote 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 listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
