A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers 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].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing 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 its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-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 allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
