An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio 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.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast 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 LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission 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 science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
