A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Observers said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
