A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little 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.
