An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means 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 describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
