A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed 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 fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
