An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
