A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 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,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly 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 LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
