An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
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 performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted 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 means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear 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.
